About Those Hate Crimes Laws

It's all very well to sit around and theorize that we don't need hate crimes legislation because of all sorts of spurious arguments about equality before the law and violations of the Constitution (none of which, so far, have been persuasive in the least). However, when it gets down to reality, the American public seems to have a different opinion. From Gallup:

A substantial majority of the American public favors the expansion of federal hate crime legislation to include crimes against people based on their gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed such legislation, which is now being considered by the Senate. Republicans, conservatives, and religious Americans are slightly less likely than others to favor the expansion of hate crime legislation, but a majority of those in each of these conservative and religious groups favors the proposed legislation.

Here's the question, with a breakdown:

Much of the organized opposition to the expansion of the hate crime law has come from conservative religious groups, while the nation's top Republican leader, President George W. Bush, has suggested he will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. But there is little evidence from these data to suggest that a majority of Republicans, conservatives, or more religious Americans are opposed to the new law.

There is a proposal to expand federal hate crime laws to include crimes committed on the basis of the victim's gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Would you favor or oppose expanding the federal hate crime laws in this way?

Those who oppose the current bill are, of course, going to insist that the American public is wrong. I guess it's because received wisdom trumps reality every time. Actually, this starts to look like another one of those controversies that is generated on the right and stays on the right, something like the evolution "controversy": a political brouhaha that has nothing to do with what's actually going on in this country. And, it only reinforces my feeling that conservatism, as it's practiced today, is going down.

Thanks to AmericaBlog.