HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, October 14, 1998
1998 Ron Paul 119:1
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.
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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:3
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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:4
“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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:5
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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:6
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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:7
Congress needs to pass our tough hate crimes
legislation,” President Clinton declared
Monday, the day Shepard died of his injuries.
1998 Ron Paul 119:8
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
mindless mandatory sentencing and targeted
certain classes of defendants — terrorists,
drug pushers — for the special evisceration of
rights.
1998 Ron Paul 119:9
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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:10
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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:11
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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:12
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.
1998 Ron Paul 119:13
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.
Note:
1998 Ron Paul 119:1 Mr. Speaker, I commend to my colleagues. Perhaps Ron Paul meant
Mr. Speaker, I recommend to my colleagues.
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