In his recent opinion piece, (“Getting inside your head,” Sept. 19) Grant Johnson erroneously equates hate-crimes laws to thought control. Hate-crimes penalties punish not thought but the extra harms that result when crimes are committed out of hatred.
Johnson correctly notes that “hate crimes ... send a message to other people of the same demographic group as the victim” but trivializes the laws’ motivation. Addressing the damage done by the message “you are not safe here” is not trivial, it is imperative.
Equality Virginia’s recent survey of violence affecting LGBT Virginians reported striking numbers: 50 percent of respondents experienced “hate violence or harassment based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation,” and fully 80 percent of transgender male respondents experienced hate violence. This situation is intolerable.
Johnson suggests shockingly that “acting on a certain belief — even if the action itself ... affords an appropriate punishment — must be protected to some extent.” Should we accept James Kittredge of Charlottesville having been beaten, tortured and left to die because of his attackers’ anti-gay beliefs? Was the killing of transgender woman Angie Zapata by a man who dehumanized her as “it” acceptable because he believed that “gay things need to die?” Should LGBT people accept living in silence and fear as the price of other people’s hatred?
We rightly value the freedom to think and speak freely. That freedom, however, has never been unlimited and must sometimes be sacrificed to protect other rights. Unless Johnson can offer a better solution to hate violence, he should stop denigrating hate-crimes laws. Better yet, he should help push for overdue hate-crimes protection for LGBT Virginians.
Patrick John Graydon
GSEAS IV
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