 Mary Jo Kopechne |
If Mary Jo Kopechne had been transgender and we had Ted Kennedy’s hate crime bill, we might not have Ted Kennedy’s hate crime bill.
The above paradox, concerning the woman who Adm. Chivas Kennedy left in his car to drown one night in 1969, occurred to me while reading a story about hate crime legislation that passed through the senate last week. The legislation calls for hate crime laws to be expanded to include gay, lesbian and transgender victims.
It’s at the definition of “victim” where it all gets fuzzy and dangerously arbitrary.
The bill was co-sponsored by Kennedy, along with Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and was attached to an annual defense policy bill in the hope that Bush will be less likely to veto it. How long can it be until a member of our military is thrown in jail because the enemy combatant they shot was gay? The day is fast approaching.
I’ve always thought it to be against everything we as Americans stand for to make beating or killing one particular person more severe of a crime than beating up or killing another, simply based on a factor as defined by whatever group the politicians du jour are trying to woo at any particular moment.
I have to admit though, as a straight non-minority member of an unprotected ethnicity, it’s a good feeling to know that if I’m beat up or verbally bashed, it won’t be because the assaulter hated me.
What we really need is a hate crime law that protects the U.S. Constitution, specifically the First Amendment. The motives behind most hate crime legislation have more to do with what we say and even think than with what we do.
Obviously, laws are already on the books to deal with those who assault others in some physical way, but what about those who verbally question the lifestyle any of the “protected” classes? Pastors, for example, can have charges pressed against them for reading scripture in public that contains passages on the sinfulness of homosexuality.
Real crimes are deserving of punishment regardless of the sexual and religious preference and ethnic makeup of the perp and victim. Anything less or more helps build the foundation for a totalitarian state. Justice is supposed to be blind, not a peeping Tom with binoculars.
Hate crime laws are intended as a form of political control, and you could be guilty of one for something as benign as, say, sending your child to school with Jell-O. An Illinois school district saw this coming and took preemptive action when it issued a ban on bringing Jell-O to school. Why? Because gelatin is sometimes made with pig tissue, which is offensive to Muslims, and continuing to bring this to school is hateful. Ditto for observing Christmas.
Meanwhile, if somebody defaces the Christian Holy Bible, that’s “entertainment.” If somebody burns the American flag and defecates on it, that’s considered “free speech.” If somebody dunks a crucifix in a jar of urine, that’s “art.” In spite of these things, Christians, don’t hold your breath (pun tragically intended) waiting for Ted Kennedy to be concerned about those who offend you.
The fact that politicians whose hate crime laws place more importance on the life or beliefs of one person or group of people over another person or group of people aren’t jailed on the grounds of violating a hate crimes law is the most glaring evidence that hate crime laws are a crock.
The congressional ridiculousness continues, unabated.
How long will it be until some lawyer coins the lucrative phrase “second-hand trans fats,” and you could go to jail under hate crime laws for eating that bacon cheeseburger in public?
How long will it be until simply calling yourself an American will be a hate crime, as it’s offensive to non and/or anti-Americans?
The government points an accusatory finger at everybody else concerning hate crimes, but they themselves have a colleague who is a Muslim and yet they continue to use the term “pork barrel spending”? This alone should be enough hate to send Congress to jail, much to the betterment of America.
In the unlikely event that the bill containing the hate crime legislation is signed by the president, I can only be saddened as to the poor timing. If we’d have had this legislation decades earlier and Mary Jo Kopechne had been transgender, Ted Kennedy might have gone to jail where he belonged, and America would have been spared a bloated, blootered and conniving affront to the Constitution.
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