Hate crimes are abysmal.
They are horrible. We should all be against them. When those racists in Texas dragged James Byrd to death behind their pickup truck, the senator wants us to know, he was just as appalled as the next guy. And when those homophobic thugs in Wyoming beat Matthew Shepard and left him to die, you can be sure Hatch was shaking his head along with the rest of us. Because backers of the hate crime measure he opposed have been largely successful in portraying it as something that any decent human being must support.