The penalty for hate crimes is based on the motivation for the crime rather than on the crime itself. A murderer is “more” guilty of murder, if he killed someone because they are black, white, or oriental than if he had killed that same person for another reason. The penalty is greater because some mistakenly believe that a stronger punishment is going to stop ethnically related crimes.

This is hogwash and blatant discrimination. The first problem is that no one absolutely knows what motivates another person to commit a crime. To say that a crime is a hate crime just because two different ethnic groups are involved is tantamount to reading minds…an impossibility for most juries.

Secondly, why should the murder of one person because of ethnicity be considered worse than the murder of another because of envy or greed, or any other motive? If your loved one is murdered, nothing will bring that person back…..not even if the murderer or murderess is sentenced to a longer time in prison. One man’s life should not be worth more than another’s.

Thirdly,such punishments are nothing more than politicians fawning at the feet of one minority or another. How many times do you read the papers and find that an African American has murdered a white person and will be punished more severely because the murderer commited the crime because the victim was white? It virtually never happens that way. Almost always it is a white person accused of a hate crime against a person of a different racial background.

So, let’s be honest with each other. All of us have to work toward harmony so the United States can continue to be the world’s melting pot. But, hate crimes are a divisive element because they create a special category for some people. And, if some people’s lives are worth more than others, there is disharmony, not union.

Politicians must stop creating special groups of people, even if they are victims, just to demonstrate how much they empathize with a given minority. For once, let’s try to promote the concept that we are all created equal and anyone who injures one of us, injures us all. A murderer is a murderer is a murderer, regardless of who the victim is!