Monday, October 08, 2007

Stop the Hate Vigil

My parish has, for the last 10 years, held a Stop the Hate Vigil in which members of other religious groups join us in a re-affirmation of the peace mission of our faiths. While sometimes it can seem a little too Unitarian in my mind, there is always good in recommitting ourselves to the idea of peace as its own goal, particularly given the rush to war and the response to terrorism that surrounds us all.

Included in the program was a list of names or hate crimes victims that were read out. #1 on the list? The non-hate crime victim Matthew Shepard. Ugh.

The problem with continuing to evoke Matthew Shepard is that not only was he not a hate crime victim, but actual hate crime victims are getting pushed aside. Now, I'm no fan of hate crime legislation (which tends to punish thought, which I think is just an incredibly stupid thing to criminalize), but those who want to do something about hate crimes in general give their political opponents a big target by using the wrong crime as an example. After all, if we can't even get the right crime as an example, how can we hope to address the actual problem? And what does this say about people who were truly victims of hate crimes based on their assumed or actual sexuality? Their crimes weren't brutal enough, so we'll use this non-hate crime example instead?

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