To find out more about the journalists and supporters of the Austin Review, please visit our Staff Page. Please visit our Response Page for details. They have set forth punishments for acts and crimes motivated by hatred based on a victim s race, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, gender, and sexual preference.
Opponents criticize such anti-hate measures on several grounds.
These rules are vague, and convictions can come from the sensitized eye of the victim rather than the blindfolded objective standard of justice. These rules presume an ability to read the mind of the accused and function either as Orwellian thought crimes or punishment for politically correct free speech. Critics also observe that anti-hate measures are applied unequally. In almost all cases, for example, they are invoked to mete out additional punishment when a white attacks a black or a heterosexual assaults a homosexual, but almost never when such roles are reversed. Reminiscent of medieval societies, where crimes by a peasant against a noble was more severely punished than the same act by peasant against peasant or noble against peasant, anti-hate measures in practice give some a privileged legal status over others.