Step Up to the Hate

“Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a humor column about hate crimes out of my hat!” “That’s not a humor column, Bullwinkle!”

OK, hate crimes aren’t remotely funny. I think that’s a given. But hate can be amusing. For example, I have come to realize over the years that my hatred for Steven G., who was my next-door neighbor when I was 11, has assumed comic proportions. That’s because, in the 45 years since he got two buddies to hold me down so he could punch me in the face without getting punched back, Steven G. has become my personal metaphor for all that is evil in the world. While others denounce Satan, I denounce Steven G.

Some days I spend hours thinking up delicious revenges upon Steven G. I imagine Steven G. coming to my building to see me, to ask if I could come out to play, just like he always used to do. And I would say no just like I always did, because even before the punching incident I hated him, because all he wanted me to do was come outside and worship him, and be dazzled by the cool way he dressed, and be awed by how many girls he promised he would have in the coming years, once he had managed to have any; that was his idea of “playing,” and I despise being that bored.

So in my fantasies I would say no, but Steven G. wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, just like every day 45 years ago. But, unlike 45 years ago, this time I would get all Quentin Tarantino on his ass. Oh, yes, I’d come out to play all right. “Bring it on, Stevie G., I’m coming out to play! Look, Stevie G., I have a pound of peeled garlic, a vice, a couple of crowbars, and a tube of Super Glue! Guess what game were going to play!”

My point is that hate can be amusing because it’s just an emotion. It’s not whether you hate; it’s whether and how you act on it. Since I haven’t yet really stuffed a pound of peeled garlic up Steven G.’s nostrils, or done the other things with the vice, etc., thinking about it can still be entertaining.

Here’s a purely rhetorical question: If hate crimes are bad because they involve hate, does that mean that stalking, a “love crime,” is good?

Seriously, no, it doesn’t. But the question might help explain why the general public is confused about the issue. People are constantly writing to tell editors of newspapers, “We don’t need hate crime legislation; all violent crimes are hate crimes, therefore all violent crimes should be treated the same.”

Here’s the difference: if I Super Glue Steven G.’s face to the front of his tight, purple, package-revealing, hip-huggers, I will have committed an act of violence against one Steven G., but I will not have terrorized all Steven G.s everywhere in the process.

If I had my way, advocates for hate crime legislation would stop using the term “hate crime” and start talking about terrorism. The reason the crimes call for more severe penalties is that they are acts of terrorism against groups. The immediate victim is intended to represent the rest of the group and the crime meant to terrorize the whole group.

Until I get my way, It would really help the debate if opponents of hate crime legislation would stop attacking the misnomer, and deal with the real purpose of the proposed laws. “Why make hate a crime?” makes as much sense as “Why do we have anti-trust laws? Isn’t trusting good?”

Here’s an unfunny factoid: Right now, in this country, homeless people are being murdered, for being homeless, at a rate (per their total numbers, per year) comparable to the rate at which Blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1968. America commits its pogroms on a personal scale, one at a time, up close.