Why “hate crime” laws are a bad idea

From the Orlando Sentinel’s Kathleen Parker:

“The Duke and Knoxville cases cast serious doubts on that premise. It is human nature to resent groups and individuals deemed more special than others.

Signaling through laws (or media treatment) that one group’s suffering is more grievous than another’s — or that one person’s murder is worse than another’s — is also likely to fragment communities, as well as to engender the very animosities such laws are meant to deter.”

Advertisement