[ OUR OPINION ]
THE ink on a hate-crimes law enacted by the 2001 Legislature had barely dried when lawmakers may have realized they failed to include all possible categories. Legislation that was all about political correctness turned out to be embarrassingly incorrect. Legislators now have amended it to include all feasible sexually related hatred. Hate-crimes bill
is politically correct
THE ISSUE The Legislature has approved a bill that would expand the hate-crimes law to include various sexually related motives.
The current law authorizes increased sentences for crimes motivated by a victim's race, religion, disability, ethnicity, national origin or sexual orientation. Former Gov. Ben Cayetano questioned whether the new law had any usefulness other than its intrinsic "statement about an issue which is very important to the nation and the community" -- in other words, its political correctness. Since he was finishing his second term, he allowed Mazie Hirono, his lieutenant governor, to sign it into law while he was out of state so she could gain any political mileage from it.
The hate-crimes legislation was too late to cover the bigoted attack on a group of gay men camping at a state park on Kauai, and the perpetrators eventually reached a plea agreement. But the incident may have caused legislators to wonder what other form of hatred might enter a person's mind in committing a crime against a person who is different from most people.
They came up with an all-encompassing hatred based on "a person's actual or perceived gender, as well as a person's gender identity, gender-related self image, gender-related appearance, or gender-related expression; regardless of whether that gender identity, gender-related self image, gender-related appearance, or gender-related expression is different from that traditionally associated with the person's sex at birth." That should about cover it.
Of course, committing a crime against a person because of that person's differentness is deplorable. So is the commission of any crime for just about any reason.
"If someone kills me because I am a man, that would be a hate crime, but if someone kills me because I am an obnoxious neighbor, it is not a hate crime, but I, as the victim, would have a hard time telling the difference," City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said after Hirono put her signature on the present law. (Actually, as we read it, current law does not make motivation based on the victim's sex a hate crime, only when based on the victim's sexual orientation. A victim's sex, or gender, would be covered under the proposed amendment.)
Prosecutors are allowed the discretion of seeking stiffer sentences for hate crimes. Those are substantial: life imprisonment with no parole for murder, life with parole instead of 20 years for Class A felonies, and a doubling of the 10- and five-year sentences for B and C felonies. Prosecutors should exercise that discretion by seeking stiffer penalties only in the most extreme cases.
