Crime is bad, plain and simple. White on white, black on black, white on black, other on other, it is all illegal. Crime is crime, a murder is a murder no matter how you slice it. “Hate” is a popular term used these days to enhance certain crimes, action, or speech. Hate is a feeling or thought you have toward something or someone, similar to any other emotion, but it is the only emotion used to label crimes. Hate crime labeling is in essence thought control performed by the United States Government. It is wrong and should stop immediately. Who is to say one cannot think or feel a certain way about anything. Hate ,in this case the motive, is the reason why a person commits a crime. The motive is rarely even used when punishing a criminal, only the act itself is looked at.
“Even if it is possible to determine the mind set in which a crime is committed, is it appropriate in a free society for the government to punish people for their inner motivations, [or]feelings?” (Barbara Dority). When a court decides to label a crime with “hate” they are really persecuting against the criminal’s personal identity. The courts, in all reality, are not supposed to do this according to precidents set in our governments history. The First Amendment clearly states freedom of speech. With speech must also come thought. The only one who can say why a person did an action is the person himself.
In context, crime is a gross violation of the law and hate is hostile feelings towards someone or something. Together, hate crime, is any of various crimes (as assault or defacement of property) when motivated my hostility to the victim as a member of a group (Marriam-Webster). The emotion of hate is no different than any other emotion such as greed, lust, or jealousy. For instance, a white male member of the Ku Klux Klan shoots and kills a black man and his wife. Also a white man finds his wife in bed with another man and shoots and kills them both. In both cases homicide was the crime being committed. In reality the crime is identical, 2 shootings resulting in death. One could say the Klan member killed out of hatred but one could also the husband killed his wife out of jealousy. Both are killings raging with emotion. If one gets labeled with hate, will the other be labeled with jealousy? “In effect, the law criminalizes the motives, as it does not do for any other kind of crime”(Sammuel Francis, 43)
The driving force which impels a person to commit any crime is known as the “motive.” It is why they did it. In most cases the motive can really be summed up in one word such as greed or jealousy. “Intent” on the other hand is what a person intends to do. They intend to rob the store, or they intend to kill a person. For the same intent there is a endless list of motives. The intent is the independent variable in a crime equation. It will stay the same while everything else can change. This is why crime is only based on the intent. “Motive, on the other hand, is largely irrelevant to the criminal act and to the punishment the act receives” (Samuel Francis, 43). Take the “sniper shooters” of Maryland and Virginia for an example. It is not why they went on their rampage that matters, it is the result of that rampage . Why they committed this crime will net even be a factor in court. The “intent” will be on trial, not the “motive.”
Acts of rage and murder (hate acts) have filled our history books for years. We as a society are looking more and more to blame something or someone else for our actions. What was once a man committing a crime, is now a man committing a hate crime. For some reason it is easier to accept evil acts if they are derived out of hate, instead of just derived. If someone commits an injustice people look for reasons why. They need these reasons in order to make actions, in an outlandish way, seem justified. But murder is already illegal, right?