Hate Crimes

A man shot up a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Tennessee because, he wrote in a four-page letter, they support gays and other liberal causes (www.uua.org). The police are classifying his actions as a hate crime.

I never thought I could be the victim of a hate crime (except for rape) since I'm part of the white majority. I only hang out with liberals so I forget that my views are not the norm. Until something like this happens. My gut reaction was that the man who did this is just filled with hate and needed a target for his rage. The anger and hate didn't stem from the difference in his beliefs from the UU's; he just needed an outlet for passions he could not control or contain.

I don't know why this distinction is important to me. Maybe because, like the battered woman, the victim--whether a congregation or a woman--is not responsible for the attack, by her actions or political views. The blame lies solely with the perpetrator who justifies in his own mind unjustifiable violence by citing differences in politics, or a dinner late or burnt. There is no acceptable reason to explain his actions and calling it a hate crime seems to tidy it all up with a bow much too neatly.

There is no excuse and there is no reason other than he wanted to express his unacknowledged feelings of powerlessness in the most destructive way possible. Like suicide bombers who use ideology to dress up their missions of death, this was an act of terrorism caused by sheer willfulness, a temper tantrum by a man who refused to accept how life is rather than how he wants it to be.

I get so mad at people who are destructive because it's so easy and quick to destroy what creation has brought about in a process usually arduous and slow. How dare he snuff out in mere seconds the lives of people who worked to make this world a better place through the slow process of social action? How dare he scar children for life with the sights and sounds of violent death right in front of their eyes. How selfish. How small. How pathetic.

Calling his actions a "hate crime" doesn't really help, except to perhaps permit a longer sentence upon conviction. Call his act a "selfish crime," a "crime of a petty and small person." Don't dignify his actions with such large passions, such grand scope. He was a small man committing the act of a smaller soul. May he rot in the hell I don't believe in for all eternity with only himself for company.