The Power of Law

Changes to Hate Crime Legislation: a functional and symbolic victory

I met someone named George at a bar recently. As a young boy, he knew of four gay men and a lesbian who were slaughtered in his hometown of Birmingham, AL. I mention their sexual orientation because this is the reason they were killed by a group of heterosexual white males. It was a crime of hate. Only such legal designations didn’t apply, officially, to the crime at the time it was committed, some twenty-odd years ago.

Two of the three murderers served probation for one of the killings. The third served two years of a ten year sentence. The others escaped punishment altogether.

George shared his tale to a group of gay men of various ages and backgrounds, as an illustration of why he thinks the recent passage of the hate crime bill in the US is a necessary triumph.

When we had begun the conversation of this current political event, I’d been generally in favour of the bill -- which exists in a different form in the country I hail from –- but I was “hearing out” what some of the opponents had to say, and in some cases felt partly convinced by them: such an amendment to the federal law favours only some groups, which is antithetical to the concept of true equality; such designations weaken the strength of a minority group, subjecting it to paternalism, when the true objective is to forge a gay identity apart from special considerations and potential subjugation.

But in the end, George’s story spoke volumes more than any of these pointed objections; and here’s why I believe his story (and all that it represents) is the reason the recently passed hate bill is indeed a triumph -- much needed, and long overdue in the fight for equality amongst all citizens of the US, and in the fight for gay rights at large.

On the most literal level, including gay people under the protection of the federal law, only seems logical when you consider the crime statistics against gay men and women as reported by the FBI. According to the FBI, sexual orientation is the third-highest recorded bias crime in the US. (And this doesn’t take into account closeted men and women who do not report their victimization for fear of further violence and alienation.) Including this group as one in need of protection seems necessary when you know that in 2005, 14.2% of bias-based crimes were against homosexuals.

The bill just passed seeks, then, to bring the law in line with reality. After all, who can deny that as a gay man, I’m afraid to walk alone in Toronto’s gay village late at night, when there are only a few other people around. That I pinch my house key between my index finger and my thumb until my fingertips turn white. Gay bashing is a fact. Just as a woman alone at night may be afraid for her life, I fear for mine on many occasions. Though I’ve never inquired, I’d think a heterosexual man walking the same gay neighbourhood alone in the dark would carry an unfamiliar fear with him, lest he be perceived as gay and thus the target of a potential assault based on his mistaken identity.

The passage of hate crimes legislation that protects gay citizens will allow the federal government to provide aid and support to local law enforcement dealing with these crimes nationwide. George’s story illustrates that some states haven’t and still don’t aggressively prosecute crimes against gay men and lesbians. There needs to be uniformity in sentencing, so that a murderer gets more than two years for snuffing out a young person’s life because he thought that person wasn’t really a person, because that person was a boy who liked other boys.

The last way George’s story speaks to the reason this bill is a vindication, requires more of a metaphorical leap, if you will; it comes in the shape of his story -- the retrospective way his story is told. I am forced to picture George as a boy: he was only 12 at the time of the murders in his hometown. A young boy with sexual desires that he knows are contrary to the norm and against what is accepted, watches the evening news with his family and learns that a group of gay people were violently murdered. He perceives the disinterest of his older brother and father; perhaps his conservative father even says something like, “good riddance.” In the months that follow, the crime is prosecuted. The murderers are let off easy, to say the least. The value of the stolen lives -- as far as this young gay boy can tell -- is worthless because they were like him, they were gay.

This is the power of law. It shapes a society and its constituents, one by one. Laws are symbolic as much as they are functional. The new bill just passed now has the power to include gays under the hate crime protection laws -- and in so ding it will be declaring that the US, a country that prides itself on civil freedoms, a country that serves as a leader of every nation, defends all the people that comprise its citizenry. Even the confused and frightened young man who sits up in his bedroom, feeling excluded, unsafe and alone.