THE HATE CRIME NON-WAVE

MTV recently ran a day-long program on the spiraling hate crime crisis in America. The Human Rights Campaign, aka the Democratic Party’s gay front organization, has made a hate crimes law a top priority in spending the millions it rakes in from well-meaning gay voters and philanthropists. Even the Log Cabin Republicans back this pointless and illiberal law. But the evidence for the last decade is damning: there is no hate crime epidemic, as I pointed out last year in my New York Times Magazine cover-story, “What’s So Bad about Hate?”. (The essay is included in “The Best American Essays 2000.”) Today, the FBI released the latest stats and they tell the same story. To listen to all the hoopla over Matthew Shepard’s awful murder, you’d think gay people were being killed on a daily basis for their orientation. Nuh-huh. In 1999, with over 12,000 law enforcement bodies on the look-out, a grand total of around 8,000 ‘hate crimes’ of all types were recorded in the entire country and three – yes, three – gay hate crime murders. Assume conservatively that gays represent about 3 percent of a total population 280 million. That’s 3 murders per 8.4 million a year. That’s three murders too many of course – but each is already illegal and subject in many states to the death penalty. And this is HRC’s top priority. Don’t you think more gay lives would be saved if HRC campaigned for tougher enforcement of seat-belt laws or safer airplanes or spent more money on an unbreakable condom? But then they wouldn’t be able to unleash the thought police on the country and use the tragic case of Matthew Shepard for more shameless fund-raising.