[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 146 (Wednesday, October 14, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2168-E2169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. RON PAUL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 14, 1998

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I commend to my colleagues in Congress as well 
as citizens everywhere an article authored by Michael Kelly, National 
Journal editor. Mr. Kelly aptly describes how the notion of hate crimes 
undermines a pillar of a free and just society; that is, equal 
treatment under the law irrespective of which particular group or 
groups with whom an individual associates. Ours is a republic based 
upon the rights of the individual.

                        Punishing `Hate Crimes'

                           (By Michael Kelly)

       As one who wholeheartedly supports capital punishment, I 
     have what seems to me a cleareyed vision of what justice 
     demands in the murder of Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old 
     Wyoming college student who was, one night last week, robbed, 
     pistol-whipped, tied to a fence and left to die. Bring in the 
     monsters who did this, try 'em, verdict 'em and string 'em 
     up, preferably before an applauding crowd of thousands.
       And justice does appear on the way to being served. Two 
     young men--Russell A. Henderson and Aaron J. McKinney--have 
     been arrested and charged with first-degree murder; their 
     girlfriends have been charged as accessories. There does not 
     seem to be a lot of doubt that Henderson and McKinney did 
     commit the acts that caused Shepard's death, nor does it seem 
     at all likely that they will escape punishment.
       But this, it is said, is not enough. Because Shepard was 
     gay, and because his killers appear to have been motivated in 
     part by an anti-gay animus (though police say robbery was the 
     primary motive), justice is said to demand more. 
     Specifically, it demands more bad law.
       ``Hate-crime'' laws mandate increased penalties for 
     defendants found guilty of committing crimes inspired by 
     certain categories of prejudice. In 21 states and the 
     District of Columbia, the categories are: race, religion, 
     color, national origin and sexual orientation. Nineteen 
     additional states have hate-crime laws that do not cover 
     sexual orientation. Ten states, including Wyoming, have not 
     passed categorical hate-crime laws. There is also a federal 
     law, which covers race, religion, color and national origin 
     but not sex or sexual orientation.
       For Shepard's sake, the cry arises, Wyoming must pass a 
     hate-crime law, and Congress must pass a new, more sweeping, 
     Federal Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would add to the 
     roster of crimes made federal offenses those inspired by 
     bigotry based on sex, disability and sexual orientation. 
     ``There is something we can do about this. Congress needs to 
     pass our tough hate crimes legislation,'' President Clinton 
     declared Monday, the day Shepard died of his injuries.
       At least he is consistent. No president has ever been more 
     willing to assault liberty in the pursuit of political 
     happiness than has this one. Clinton is always willing to 
     embrace any new erosion of rights, as long as there is a 
     group of voters or political contributors out there who wish 
     it so. This is one area in which Clinton has been thoroughly 
     bipartisan. In his five years in office, he has joined 
     Republicans in Congress on quite a spree of liberty-bashing. 
     He has signed laws that have stripped habeas corpus to its 
     bones, vastly increased the number of crimes deemed federal 
     offenses, established

[[Page E2169]]

     mindless mandatory sentencing and targeted certain classes of 
     defendants--terrorists, drug pushers--for the special 
     evisceration of rights.
       And playing to the other side of the political spectrum, 
     Clinton has consistently and strongly supported the expansion 
     of harassment and discrimination law, an expansion that has 
     in recent years increasingly worked to criminalize behavior 
     that government once regarded as private. Well, at least he 
     supported such law until the case of Jones v. Clinton arose.
       Of all the violence that has been done in this great 
     expansion of state authority over, and criminalization of, 
     the private behavior and thoughts of citizens, none is more 
     serious than that perpetuated by the hate-crime laws. Here, 
     we are truly in the realm of thought crimes. Hate-crime laws 
     require the state to treat one physical assault differently 
     from the way it would treat another--solely because the state 
     has decided that one motive for assaulting a person is more 
     heinous than another.
       What Henderson and McKinney allegedly did was a terrible, 
     evil thing. But would it have been less terrible if Shepard 
     had not been gay? If Henderson and McKinney beat Shepard to 
     death because they hated him personally, not as a member of a 
     group, should the law treat them more lightly? Yes, say hate-
     crime laws.
       In 1996 the FBI recorded 1,281 ``crimes against persons'' 
     for reasons of sexual-orientation bias. Two of these were 
     murders and 222 were aggravated assaults. Four hundred and 
     seventy-two of what the government termed hate crimes were 
     not assaults but ``acts of intimidation.'' These latter would 
     not be crimes except for the determination that expressions 
     of certain prejudices and hatreds were in themselves criminal 
     offenses.
       There is a long history of police and prosecutors slighting 
     assaults against gays and lesbians. Justice demands that the 
     cops and the courts treat the perpetrators of assaults 
     against citizens who happen to be homosexual as harshly as 
     they do the perpetrators of assaults against anyone else. But 
     not more so.

     

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