I've stated in the past that I do not believe in hate crimes laws -- period. No, I'm not arguing that assaults and other crimes against individuals based upon membership in different classes are acceptable -- quite the contrary, I believe that the notion of distinguishing between citizens based upon those classes sets a bad precedent and constitutes an unequal protection of the law. I'm therefore supportive of President Bush's announced decision to veto the hate crimes law passed by Congress.

Andrew Sullivan, though, does offer an interesting critique of reasons why people support and oppose such laws -- and the inconsistencies among them.

There are, I think, two coherent positions on hate crime laws. The first is opposition to the entire concept, its chilling effect on free speech, its undermining of the notion of equality under the law, and so on. That's my position. I oppose all hate crimes laws, regardless of the categories of individuals they purport to protect. The other coherent position is the view that hate crimes somehow impact the community more than just regular crimes and that the victims of such crimes therefore deserve some sort of extra protection under the law. The criteria for inclusion in such laws is any common prejudice against a recognizable and despised minority. The minority need not be defined by an involuntary characteristic - religious minorities are so protected - and they choose their faith. Nor need the minority be accurately identified. If a gentile is bashed because the attacker thinks he's Jewish, the hate crime logic still applies. I disagree with this, but I can accept its coherence.

Sullivan then goes on to argue that if one accepts the notion of hate crimes laws for anyone, then one must accept inclusion of homosexuals unless one is a queer-bashing bigot who wants to relegate homosexuals to inferiority and give aid and comfort to those who commit crimes of violence against them. Such a notion is, of course, utter nonsense, but we've long come to expect precisely that sort of nonsense out of Andrew Sullivan when it comes to discussions of homosexuality. That one could oppose the granting of special protection to practitioners of behavior that one considers morally suspect is not the same thing as supporting violence against practitioners of such behavior.

I'm curious -- when Congress declined to include special protection for the elderly in the current bill, does Sullivan take that mean that they were implicitly approving crimes against senior citizens? Would he accept the notion that the House and Senate were giving a stamp of approval to senior abuse? Of course not -- but then again, Sullivan is consistently inconsistent on such things, and operating on the basis of muddled thinking or strawman logic.

And I'd argue, contrary to Sullivan, that there is something logical and consistent about supporting the limitation of such laws to race/ethnicity and religion. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments clearly gives a role to Congress in ensuring an end to racial discrimination. The First Amendment gives a special place to religious freedom in our society, and acting to ensure that citizens are not intimidated out of the free exercise of religion is equally legitimate. Under this analysis, one could argue that inclusion of any categories other than these two is not acceptable and be still logically consistent.

Of course, Sullivan's argument isn't at all one about consistency -- it is really an excuse for him to bash anyone who dares to disagree with him about the morality of homosexual conduct. You get to the heart of the matter late in the post.

Perhaps making these logical arguments is futile. The reason for this veto is quite simple. Christianists simply regard homosexuality as an evil and a sickness. Any law that implies that being gay is an identity and deserves equal respect and protection as other identities is anathema to them. Implicit in their worldview - and absolutely implicit in the position of the president - is that it's okay to attack gays in a way that it's not okay to attack, say, Jews or blacks. This is the core position of the Christianists - which is why I refuse to call them Christians. Bush, we now know, is a captive of this bigotry and an enabler of it. Whatever your general views of hate crime laws, this argument holds. And this president should be ashamed.

That's right -- anyone who views homosexuality as morally suspect (as 2000 years of Christian teaching on matter holds) is a bigot. Those who concede legitimacy to such moral views are enablers of bigotry. Holding such views is the equivalent of supporting acts of physical violence against homosexuals. The argument is so illogical that it needs no extensive refutation -- it refutes itself. And Sullivan again trots out his neat little catch phrase -- Christianist -- for anyone who dares to accept the moral teachings of the Bible on homosexuality, trying to equate those who hold to traditional Christianity with those Muslim extremists who wage murderous jihad against the infidels. As I've pointed out in the past, Sullivan's hateful rhetoric and extemism on such matters can legitimately lead one to label him as a Homosexualist.