Putting the lie to my recent theory that Congress can’t manage to accomplish anything, the House of Representatives voted yesterday to further expand so called “hate crime” legislation to include “those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation” which will include attacks on lesbian, gay and transgender people. Of course, in typical fashion, Democratic sponsors of the measure used what amounts to blackmail to get it through, attaching it as an amendment to a critical military funding bill rather than having a stand alone vote for the proposal on its own merits.

Now, given how often I have written here in support of gay rights, equality in marriage rights and equal opportunity for gays in the military, you might suppose I’d be in support of this measure. And in one way you’d be right. (Well, sort of…) I mean, if we’re going to keep festooning our legal system with a series of bad, essentially unconstitutional and largely ineffective laws offering special protections to certain interest groups and demographics, then I suppose we might as well include the gays as well.

None of this, though, addresses the fundamental flaws in all of these so called “hate crime” laws. We’ve been through most of it before and I hardly expect the liberal supporters of these unconstitutional measures to change their minds now, but that doesn’t improve the situation at all. There remain two bedrocks questions about these laws which have never been adequately answered by their supporters.

First, there is the very simple question of unequal protection and enforcement of the law. When you expend more resources on the prosecution of, for example, one person’s murder, and apply stiffer punishment to the perpetrator, based solely on the demographic definition of the victim, then you are effectively stating that the lives of those who don’t fit that description are worth less. The mental gymnastics which I see supporters go through to try to deny this never ceases to amaze me.

Second, and more to the question of constitutionality, is the fact that these laws take actions which are already fully covered under current laws and expand them based on absolutely nothing more than what the perpetrator was thinking at the time of the crime. Supporters will, of course, begin chiming in with the tired old argument of, “Nay nay! Motive is taken into account on many crimes!” This line of thought has had more holes shot in it than a swiss cheese, but that never seems to stop them. Motive and thought are critical in finding a suspect and defining the crime as per intent and level, but the views and feelings of the criminal at the time of the act are not punishable.

So, yet again, the Federal Government moves to expand the increasing volume of “thought crimes” in our country, constitution be damned. Sadly, there seems to be far too little spine among officials fearful of angering any block of voters to stop the slide. This Friday proves to be another sad chapter in our legislative history.