Hate crimes not about punishment ~ By Joseph Farah

By Joseph Farah Posted: June 18, 2009 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 The so-called "hate crimes" bill making its way through the U.S. Senate purports to be about stiffer punishment of those offenses motivated by bigotry. But it is not. It never is. The whole notion of "hate crimes," not just the specific and particularly reprehensible bill approved by the House of Representatives and awaiting approval by the Senate, but all such misguided legislation, has never been about sentences. It has never been about deterrence of future crimes. Instead, it is about creating new classes of political protection – unequal protection under the law, a wholly unconstitutional and immoral idea. Let me demonstrate what I mean. The bill in the Senate right now is called "The Matthew Shepard Act" – named for the patron saint of the homosexual activist movement after one of their own was murdered by two thugs who robbed him and tortured him to death. It was alleged, never with any substance, that he was victimized because he was a homosexual. Both of the men convicted of the crime are currently serving life sentences. One of them faced the death penalty, but Matthew Shepard's mother argued against it. Yet Matthew Shepard's mother is right back in the thick of arguing for the new federal law – whose sole purpose is supposedly to provide stiffer penalties for hate crimes. Mind you, Matthew Shepard's murderers got a life sentence not because of the motivation for their crime, but merely because of the heinousness of the offense. His mother literally saved one of the perpetrators from the death sentence by arguing for life in prison. She not only doesn't want tougher penalties for those who commit crimes against people based on what's going through their mind, she didn't even want them when it came to punishing those who took the life of her own son. [CONTINUE READING]

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