Courage of Conviction

I’ve never been a fan of hate crimes in any sense - from the committing of the crime to the idea that you can double punish someone for not only the crime, but the thought and intention behind the crime.  Orwell called that thoughtcrime.  Four Republican Congressmen in PA - Dent, English, Gerlach, and Platts essentially voted to endorse the idea that we can criminalize thought.  Of course thought is one thing, the behavior is what we truly end up punishing.  The thing is, we already have laws on the book punishing these crimes.  Why are we putting more value on the murder of one person over another.  If people are not equal based on our birth, then our nation’s basis for it’s law is no longer valid. 

Murder is murder, crime is crime.  I, of all people understand that our beliefs and expectations lead us to act.  I also believe that we have a choice as to whether we take the next step in going from thought to action though.  Our laws punish behavior, not thought.  Hate crimes are in this weird middle ground - not strictly punishing thought, but not strictly punishing behavior either.  It’s a mix and in my mind that is a dangerous leap. 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.