Monday, Oct. 20,2008 8:30 p.m.
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.