Persons, however, disagree over whether there should be special hate crime laws. This month's forum offers opportunity to comment on such laws and the issues surrounding them. Background material on hate crimes, including links to resources from the ELCA and elsewhere. There is no justification for yet more laws to further the agendas of special interests. Hate crime legislation is simply bad law piled upon relatively sound law.
Violent crimes are a product of hate by definition.
There are sufficent laws on the books that address the victimization of individuals or any group. To single out one group as being somehow more deserving of special treatment is to put a greater value on one life than another. We are all equal in God's eyes. I applaud the ELCA for taking on this plague of modern society. It seems hate crimes are really not new either.