Comments by Java Mann

What's In A Name? On September 22, just before midnight, Ronald Edward Gay entered the Back Street Café in Roanoke Virginia. He ordered a beer. A few minutes later he pulled a 9mm handgun from his pocket and fired eight rounds into the crowd in the bar. He didn’t know the people in the bar.

After emptying his gun, he left the bar, dropped the gun in a trash can and walked away. When police apprehended him a few blocks away he raised his hands and offered no resistance.

Gay didn’t even know the bar existed until that night. Just half an hour earlier he was in another tavern and asked the staff for directions to the nearest gay bar. Ironically, he was not directed to the Back Street Café, but to The Park, another gay bar about three blocks away. Gay showed the staffer who’d given him the directions his gun and said he was going to "waste some faggots".

In a perfect world, we would not need laws to tell us what we can and cannot do. Mature adults would act like mature adults, personal property would be respected, and the rights of the individual would be valued. We do not live in a perfect world. 

For fear of sounding obvious, the concept of hate crime law is a very decisive issue, perhaps rightly so. There are possibly more laws on the books today than are necessary, and people are leery of gateway laws that start the erosion process of personal freedom. Having said that, there are actions that exceed the obvious. Painting a swastika on a synagogue is not the same as tagging a subway car. Burning a cross is not the same as starting a trash fire. These are examples of domestic terrorism. Entering a bar with a loaded gun for the express purpose of "wasting some faggots" is also an act of terrorism, and should be seen as such before the law.

There are those who would argue that hate crime laws establish a hierarchy of victims. To them, I sadly say, get real. In this country there IS a hierarchy of victims, both official and unofficial. Unofficially, a crime committed against a rich white male will be tried with more zeal than the same crime committed against a poor black man. Is this right? Of course not, but it exists. Officially, police officers, members of the military and government officials out rank the general population. If you punch an offduty police officer, even if you didn’t know it was an offduty police officer, you are guilty of assaulting an officer of the law (and Lord have mercy on your soul). 

Hate crime laws do not place an augmented value the rights, the life or the property of one individual over any other; rather they recognize an attack against a group. Though the actions of the crime may be directed physically against an individual, they are intended as a strike against a group. When Ronald Gay entered the bar he did not intend to kill Danny Overstreet, but to "waste some faggots". His target was not Overstreet, but any and all gay men and women, just as the bigot who defaces a synagogue with a swastika is not attacking the property’s owner, but all Jews. 

The second argument against hate crime laws, is that they curtail individuals' right to free expression, that they are attempting to create a category of "thought crime". This is, at best, morose. In civilized society the right of the individual extends only to the point where it infringes on the rights of others. Just as it is wrong and illegal to shout fire in a crowded public place, it is wrong and should be illegal to taunt a stranger with shouts of kyke, gook, nigger or faggot. In a perfect world we wouldn’t need laws to tell us this behavior was wrong. 

In a perfect world, a man wouldn’t empty a handgun into a room crowded with strangers because he had been taunted about his last name.

JM

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