The celebration of diversity is an interesting concept. Society tells us to be proud our differences. If you are gay, straight, Jewish, Shinto, Ethiopian, Indonesian, or an interesting combination somewhere in the middle, celebrate it, because having differences is what makes our society strong. This is where hate crime legislation comes in. Hate crime legislation punishes people who refuse to tolerate difference and express their refusal in violent or nonviolent illegal ways. Hate crime legislation is essentially the idea that hate crimes should carry harsher penalties than other crimes. The same crime committed with different motives would hold different consequences. Under this premise, hate crime legislation should be realized to be

Punishment for a crime is generally based on the severity and conditions of a crime. For example, someone who causes a minor car accident may get a ticket for say, failing to stay to the right of the center line. They pay the ticket or argue their case in traffic court. Things change, however, when people are injured. A little old lady who has a bad back may be nothing more than an insurance hassle. If the accident wasn't so minor and a young woman breaks her neck, something like reckless endangerment may be added to the bill. Perhaps she dies. Perhaps she was pregnant. Perhaps the person at fault was drunk. All of these things affect the punishment: a bigger ticket, a court appearance, jail time, suspension of license, and so on. The only other thing that could change the sentencing would be if it was a hate crime or not.

The Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act of 1994 was passed as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This Act increased sentences of crimes by one third if they were proven to be hate crimes. (www.civilrights.org)

Unfortunately, solving crime problems is not as easy as simply increasing the years a criminal spends in prison or the fine they pay. It is nothing more than wishful thinking to believe increased penalties for hate crimes would act as deterrent. People rarely commit crimes with the intention of getting caught, so many would not care how long the dictated prison term might be or how high the cost.

The Church Arson Prevention Act, passed in 1996, was mainly a reaction to a rash of church arsons that destroyed over 66 African-American churches over a period of 18 months. It extended the Hate Crimes Statistics Act to 2002 and reinforced laws that made this sort of crime illegal in the first place. The Act increased penalties of convicted persons, and provided funds for the increase of personnel and investigation pertaining to church arsons. (www.civilrights.org)

Congress defines a hate crime as "a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person"(Congress). After reading it once, it seems to make sense. A closer look with reveal the dangerous ideals behind it. First, it must be understood how a crime is determined a hate crime.

Hate crime legislation has only really been in effect in the last decade or so. The first piece of hate crime legislation was passed in 1990: The Hate Crime Statistics Act, which required that the Justice department to gather and publish statistics on

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