By Curtis E. Hinkle
Below is some commentary from Fox News which landed in my email box this morning. I felt compelled to analyze this because it is typical of the right-wing anti-intersex, irrational thinking which passes as logical. Fox News is a channel I have blocked on my TV because I consider it to be racist, homophobic and nothing but a propaganda network for the Republican Party.
First of all notice that the writer uses “hermaphrodites” as the example, probably for comic and derogatory impact on the readers. As we know the hate crime bill which was passed into law has nothing to do with intersex people or protecting intersex people from hate crimes, but we end up being the example used in this commentary.
The author then pretends that people who are being charged with hate crimes are actually being prosecuted because of thought crimes, as if thought crimes are not already an important part of US law and many of these thought crimes are a result of the very same right wing thinking which is propagated by Fox News. The Patriot Act is definitely replete with thought crimes. As an example, right here where I live, a fellow member of an organization I am part of was arrested a few years ago for simply carrying a poster which condemned the war in Iraq during a visit by the former President Bush. He was charged with being in a “No Free Speech Zone”. Despite many appeals, the charge was upheld and he spent a long time in prison.
Conspiracy is a thought crime. One does not have to carry out the crime, just think about it and discuss is. That is very different from the Hate Crime legislation and that is the serious flaw in the Right Wing’s argument that Hate Crimes are thought crimes. You cannot be arrested for a hate crime or charged with a hate crime just for
thinking about it. You have to act on it.
I am not in favor of outlawing freedom of speech or thought. I am in favor of outlawing hate crimes and making sure that people are not targeted because someone thinks they belong to some identity group which the individual may or may not even agree with. It is not about what the writer says when he writes that we should identify just as human. It is about others who would divide us into groups and kill us. If they do that, they should stand accountable both for making such divisions within humanity and then acting on it because it is a form of madness which humanity desperately needs to end.
FOX COMMENTARY FOLLOWS
———————————————————————————————
President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which by some weird circumstance also includes hate crime legislation.
Now, I’m no fan of hate. Hate in all forms is ugly, even when performed by beautiful people (that’s a shout out to Stephanie Von Pratt, who turned me down for my senior prom). But here’s what I don’t get: If I kill someone, I’m a killer. But hate crime law says that I also broke a new law, one that has to do with my thoughts when I
committed said crime.
So it’s a thought crime more than a hate crime. Which begs the question: How can a thought be against the law?
Now I can barely read, so I don’t want to get too deep into this, but if I were to kill my co-host Bill Schulz, whether I hated him or not, that’s a crime. But, if we find out later that he was a sequential hermaphrodite, one might say it could be a hate crime.
I don’t get that at all.
What of terrorists? Does the fact that they hate us make their crimes worse? Not to them; punishment is meaningless. Which is the real truth about hate, anyway: Hate crime laws won’t stop hate or crime. It’s an after-the-fact gesture that does nothing to stop evil.
Even more, focusing on the killer’s outlook diminishes the victim. It’s no longer Bill Schulz is dead, but “Bill Schulz, the sequential hermaphrodite, is dead.”
Humanity should come before identity. We need to see people as people, not as part of groups. We know bigotry is bad. But murder in any form is so substantially worse, that it needs no footnote.
And if you disagree with me, then you’re probably racist.
Source:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,570527,00.html
