Hate crimes

There is another interesting post on my favorite community web log, Metafilter.

The story: Remembering Matthew Sheppard - How has the town of Laramie changed since the attack?

The background: Matthew Shepard was a gay student that studied at the University of Wyoming located in Laramie, Wyoming. Shepard was attacked on October 7, 1998 by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. After meeting at a bar, Henderson and McKinney offered Shepard a ride in their car. Henderson and McKinney proceeded to rob, pistol-whip (beat a person with the stock of a gun), and beat Shepard, finally leaving him tied to a fence in a remote rural area. Shepard's skull was fractured during the attack and eventually died on October 12, 1998 while receiving hospital care.

Following arrest by police, Henderson and McKinney argued they were driven into temporary insanity by by Shepard's alleged homosexual flirtatious advances towards them. Girlfriends of the two alleged attackers told prosecution that Henderson and McKinney had planned premeditated robbery of the gay Sheppard. Henderson eventually plead guilty to charges and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison. McKinney was found guilty by jury of the charge of murder and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Shepard family pushed for support of the Matthew Shepard Act which would expand the realm of the 1969 United States Federal Hate Crime Law to include crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability rather. The act did not pass legislation due to conservative lobbyist pushback and a threat of veto by President Bush.

The argument: There are two main arguments for support or opposition of the Matthew Shepard Act and any of its future derivatives.

Support - The argument to support hate crime laws relates to the indirect effect on society as a whole. By murdering Matthew Shepard in hate-crime related activity, the entire gay population of the town and area is placed into a state of fear for being who they simply are (in this case, homosexual). A hate crime should be sentenced more harshly because it is not only an offense to the victim, but also an indirect threat towards all who share the same state of being.

Opposition - The argument to oppose hate crime laws whether it be the United States Federal Hate Crime Law or the suggested expansion by the Matthew Shepard Act is that by punishing a crime against certain people more, then it means that the same crime is punished less for other people. In question, why should a murder be less horrid for a victim and his or her families because the victim is straight rather than gay, white rather than black, healthy rather than disabled? It is also argued that by punishing a criminal more strictly because a crime was inspired by hate, it thereby is punishing a person for thoughtcrime rather than their actual illegal actions.