Miguel De La Torre blogged at Ethics Today about his participation in a press conference held in Washington, DC, where several hundred clergy gathered to demonstrate their support for the proposed Hate Crimes legislation currently before Congress. The entire transcript is worth reading, but here are some highlights:
"My Lord and Savior, through words and deeds, has taught me to stand with those who are oppressed. Today, the Congress has an opportunity to redress some of the oppression faced by our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters. Today the Congress has an opportunity to be used by the Almighty as an instrument of salvation and liberation.
"Some Christians from the far Right will attempt to paint these as special rights for gays and lesbians, asking where will it all end. I'll tell you where it ends. It ends, in the words of the prophet Amos, when justice rolls down like water, and righteousness like an everlasting stream."
Regardless of what stance Christians take on the issue of homosexuality, all Christians can agree that violent acts against anyone need to be punished by our civil society.
As a Christian, I cannot imagine why the body of Christ would even think twice about supporting these laws.
Neither can I.
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I definitely and wholeheartedly agree that violent acts against anyone need to be punished by our civil society.
ReplyDeleteBut I do "think twice" about supporting bias-motivated hate crime laws of ANY sort, because any law that depends on the ability to read another person's mind and ascertain their motives is . . . unrealistic, at best. Our legal system can barely function at the level of figuring out people's criminal actions--look at all the people who have been sentenced to death for crimes they didn't commit. I think it's utterly foolish to try to investigate motives.
If someone beats me to a bloody pulp because I'm a Christian and they don't like my theology, I expect my government to take action based on the fact that I was beaten to a bloody pulp, period. I don't expect them to care about my theology or the theology of my attacker.
No though police, thank you.
Tristangrace... the problem with your argument that a law which requires "the ability to read another person's mind" is bad is that almost every criminal law in this country requires doing exactly that - in order to convict somebody, the state must prove they had a requisite mental state (or "mens rea") that makes them morally culpable of the crime. Every criminal jury is asked to determine if a defendent's mindset was "negligent," "reckless," "knowing" or "intentional" about the crime he allegedly committed... and trust me, if we didn't care about the mental state of a person, if it was strict liability for particular actions, most of us wouldn't like it one bit. After all, what differentiates murder from manslaughter from self-defense? Mental state. This is not to say that there isn't a reasonable debate to be had as to whether "hate" can be described with the precision needed to be prosecuted, whether "hate" for certain suspect classes is a good reason for stronger sentences, etc., and personally I'm suspect of hate crimes laws as well... but to say we shouldn't do so because we can't know the contents of a criminal's mind is simply to be ignorant of how American criminal law works.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should have written "the ability to read another person's mind TO ascertain their motives" instead of "the ability to read another person's mind AND ascertain their motives."
ReplyDeleteSince it sounds like you understood my point anyway, I will refrain from trying to read your mind to ascertain whether you MEANT to be condescending in your reply, and instead will merely address your content. I am familiar with necessity of making some judgments about a person's mental state; seems to me that that's still a far cry from ascribing motives to a perpetrator.
I think it's irresponsible to suggest that people shouldn't "think twice" about supporting hate crime legislation when neither you nor the blogger you referenced went into any discussion--at ALL--of the caveats associated with that whole concept. You may mislead people a great deal more ignorant than I am with an approach that seems to read roughly: "Hate is bad. Christians shouldn't hate. Therefore, Christians should support hate-crime legislation."
It sounds like you have some doubts about it yourself; why not elaborate on those and ENCOURAGE people to think about it?
Why not? Simply because I believe that before we can have an intelligent debate on something, it's important to understand the terms of that debate. The hate crimes issue deals with criminal law, specifically that part of it which requires proof of mental state. If a person is unaware that we already require the state to prove mental state for crimes, and that many statutes require that a defendant have a very specific motive to be punished for that crime, then it is impossible to rationally discuss the idea of creating another set of crimes based on a different, particular motive ("hate" for a suspect class, or what is more likely, violence with the intent to intimidate/threaten other members of the suspect class, similar to a civil tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress). Burglary is breaking and entering with the intent to commit a felony. A convicted sex offender can be convicted if he walks through a park with the intent to observe young children (in some districts). All of the "attempted" crimes require a sense of the criminal's motive. Condescending or not, my objective was to place the discussion on firmer ground so that you aren't wasting your time arguing something irrelevant.
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