Hate crimes legislation is at least two decades old. I worked against the first federal bill in 1990. In all these years, nothing has changed about this legislation – it remains unnecessary, unwarranted and undemocratic. Twenty-six years later, Utah is still kicking around the idea. Of course, the Utah Legislature passed a hate crimes law several years ago but what it passed missed the mark for its original supporters.
This year, Senator Steve Urquhart, a Republican from St. George, was the new bill sponsor. And, new or not, the bill died another ignominious death. The LDS Church announced its opposition and Urquhart’s support began to die on the vine. There is a lot to unpackage about hate crimes legislation, so let’s start at the top.
You might wonder why another hate crimes law is needed if Utah already has one. The answer is that the current law does not mention sexual orientation or gender identity. The whole purpose of the hate crimes movement is to push gay rights. Without the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity, the idea of a broad law promoting tolerance and respect for everyone remains incomplete, according to the gay community. It’s not enough that Utah’s current law covers everyone – Utah’s gay community insists it must single out its own. Not equal rights; advertised rights.
Unlike some of my conservative friends, I don’t mind the idea of a general hate crimes law. There is something more than criminal about people painting a swastika on a Jewish synagogue. There is something more reprehensible than trespassing when racists burn a cross on the lawn of a black family. In the name of the common good, legislatures are right to criminalize domestic terrorism of these kinds. The question then for the Utah Legislature is this: Is homosexuality the moral equivalent of religion and race? And this is the only question.
America accepts civil rights laws. In fact, over the years we’ve added other categories of people to traditional categories, such as disability and age. It’s not a stretch for the gay community to want to add sexual orientation and gender identity. So why the pushback from the Utah Legislature? The reason is because most Utahns still do not view homosexuality as morally equivalent to human traits such as race or national origin or even a fundamentally chosen trait such as religion.
Hate crimes legislation is all about gay rights, regardless of claims from the new bill sponsors that everyone has a sexual orientation and gender identity. In these bills, sexual orientation is typically defined as “heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual.” While nobody really knows what a bisexual means under the law, certainly violent crimes are not being committed on any significant basis to people who have sex with both males and females. In fact, in our current cultural decay, such people are often glorified.
And how many heterosexuals are assaulted physically or verbally for being heterosexual? None. Hate crimes laws were invented by the gay community to provide one more layer of legal recognition for the members of its community. Period. It’s gay rights legislation and always has been. When Senator Urquhart took to the Senate floor to advocate for his bill he did not have a cluster of heterosexual or bisexual citizens surrounding him as evidence of discrimination. He had a small group of gay activists with him.
Contrary to reassurances by the bill’s supporters, a hate crimes law affects free speech. The vast number of “assaults” against gays are verbal – simple name-calling. As disrespectful as name-calling can be, it does address rights of free speech and to say it doesn’t is disingenuous on the part of the bill’s advocates. This is exactly the point made by the LDS Church over the new Utah bill. They see where all of this is headed, notwithstanding diplomatic assurances and supposed legal firewalls. The LDS Church knows that the real target of the gay community is the ability of religions to speak freely about moral issues such as homosexuality.
The “delicate balance” raised by the LDS Church in its objections to the new bill, and a term excoriated by Senator Urquhart as irrelevant, perfectly represents the view of so many Utahns who seek peaceable solutions to the redresses of the gay community but who ultimately cannot accept homosexuality as the moral equivalent of their faith.
Including enhanced penalties for crimes, not to mention the chilling effect on free speech, in the name of homosexuality simple does not measure up for Utahns, even in a same-sex marriage culture. Nobody should want to hurt anyone’s feelings, let alone harm them or their property physically. But real hate crimes are about a society, not just an individual. In the end, we have to decide if name-calling, or even a rare physical assault by some idiot, is the same thing as painting a swastika on a synagogue or burning a cross on the lawn of a black family.
For now, Utah is saying those things are different.
I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.
