Indiana is behind on hate crimes legislation

Indiana and four other states – Arkansas, Wyoming, Georgia and South Carolina – are lagging behind the other 45 states in one major respect: They have no legislation in place to deal with hate crimes.

Last year, legislators tried to address this problem with Indiana House Bill 1459, which defined a hate crime as a crime “in which an offender chooses a victim based on color, creed, disability, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or sex.”

Some evangelical lobbyist groups cried foul over the inclusion of “sexual orientation” in the bill. One e-mail sent out to several churches and families claimed the bill “represents an attempt to give special protection to homosexuals and cross-dressers by stating that a crime against them is to be treated with more severity than a crime against a senior citizen, a child or a pregnant mother.”

The bill failed when state Rep. Jackie Walorksi, after reviewing letters from “concerned citizens,” pushed through an amendment to the bill that included language that would make a crime against an unborn fetus a hate crime.

Recent examples of hate crimes in Indiana include the painting of a swastika on an interracial couple’s shed in Terre Haute. The swastika also appeared on the city’s first African-American church and an Asian restaurant this year.

These acts go beyond simple vandalisms. A hate-motivated crime against an individual of a particular race, religion or other minority group is not just an attack on that individual. It is meant to be an attack against the entire group to which that person belongs, and it causes harm to society overall.

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist said “this conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm ... bias motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.”

Hate crime legislation will allow for harsher sentencing for those convicted of committing a hate crime and would allow for the victim of the crime to later sue the perpetrator in court.

Unfortunately, hate crimes are a reality in today’s world. As long as there are people who hold bigoted views, there will be those among them motivated to commit crimes against others based on their hatred.

Indiana should not allow itself to turn a blind eye to a very real and serious problem.

No state is entirely free from such crimes, so why would a state not have the legislation to deal with them?