Hate Crimes Are a Mark Aganist Society
Crime is horrible and scary. Crimes are reported everyday in the United States and other countries. All crimes are awful from murders and robberies to rapes and assaults. This is because crimes are not only harmful to the individuals that they happen to but crimes are also bad for society as a whole. As I have stated, all crimes are obviously awful and hurtful, it seems that hate crimes are the worst kinds of crimes. This is because hate crimes seem to say much about society and hate crimes attack the moral fiber of mankind. Hate crimes are not random in my opinion because the reasons that people who perpetrate hate crimes seem to seek out a particular group of persons to attack.
It is understandable that different people are going to have different views concerning society. Therefore, people can agree to disagree because differ views about society provide the ground work for freedom, creativity, and individuality. It is also understandable for people to protest against views that people think are wrong such as protesting against the war or the fighting in Israel. It is also understandable to protest against marriage equality for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. However, resulting to physical violence and verbal attacks to frighten a particular group in society from standing up for what they believe in is wrong. It seems like many minority groups have been the victims of hate crimes such as Jews, African Americans, and homosexuals.
One minority group that has had to deal with many hate crimes is homosexuals. The have been many occurrences of anti-gay violence. The most extreme form of anti gay violence is labeled queer bashing. Many times the perpetrators of queer bashing or any other hate crime are never caught. Queer bashing involves a group of men surrounding a man whom they think is gay and beating him unconscious or to death while peppering him verbally with anti gay taunts and slurs.
Hate crimes against gay people used to be swept under the gay or if they made it to the courts they were often trivialized because many judges viewed violent crimes against gays with a “boys will be boys mentality.” One case involving anti gay violence dealt with lawyers getting a jury to believe that a large dose of Hostess Twinkies made Dan White kill openly gay city councilman Harvey Milk instead of the fact that Mr. White seemed to hate homosexuals.
Today, most hate crimes are taken seriously in society. Therefore, I hope that justice will be served for three gay men who were attacked at a gay pride festival in San Diego recently. Last Saturday, three men yelled anti gay slurs and hit two men who they believed to be gay over the head with a baseball bat. The three men also stabbed another man on the back with a knife. The incidence is being considered a hate crime (San Diego Union Tribune, 7/31/06).
Hate crimes say more about the perpetrators of the hate crime than the victims of it. Hate crime seems to be perpetrated by people with low self esteem. They may also believe that they will lose control of something if they tolerate and accept a minority group. It is funny that people who commit hate crimes use fear as their weapon of choice because in realty, they are the ones who are afraid of something. Hate crimes will never go away unless society takes a stand agaist them.
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