HudsonEnglish 10-HMonday, April 9, 2001HATE CRIME LAWSImagine you are a family member of a man who was chained up to the back of a pickup truck and drug along a gravel road for two miles until he was dead. Then imagine how you would feel after you found out that this happened just because he was a black man. Things like this sicken me. I believe that the people that are responsible for these horrific crimes should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. That is why I strongly support hate crime laws.Now, before I dive into this very controversial subject, I should probably define what hate crime laws are so you will have a better understanding of what I am talking about. As I have understood it, hate crime laws are laws that protect certain minorities or groups from bias motivated violence and harassment, and also more harshly punish people that commit these crimes against them.As I started to do my research on hate crime laws I began to notice that there are many experts that are on my side of this issue, and very few experts that oppose hate crime legislation. According to Issues and Controversies on File some experts that do not support hate crime laws believe that these laws “perpetuate inequality among U.S. citizens”. They say that hate crime laws “single out” or pick the minorities that get the special privileges while other groups don’t get any protection. The way they see it is, “why should it be any more of a crime to attack a gay person, they ask, than a heterosexual person?”(506). Other experts that oppose hate crime laws such as Don Feder, believe that these laws deny another basic concept of democracy (equality before law) by creating different classes of victims”(3). Feder says that “anti-bias laws punish ideas.” He believes that these ideas should be protected by the constitution. These are the reasons that Don Feder and very few other experts are against ...
