Sen. Mike Young & Hate Crime Legislation

Maybe you are OK with Indiana being one of 5 states without a hate crimes law. That's your right. Maybe you like that Indiana gets lumped in with Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Wyoming for this purpose (places with less-than-stellar track records of protecting minority rights). That too is your right.

The Indiana state Senate, yesterday, debated a hate crimes bill. It passed out of committee 9-1. For those keeping track at home, those 9 committee votes didn't all come from democrats; there are only 10 of them in the entire senate and 3 on this particular committee.

Anyway, the pertinent language out of committee was this:

The person committed the offense, including an offense involving the property of an individual or a group of individuals, with the intent to harm or intimidate an individual or a group of individuals because of a perceived or actual characteristic of the individual or group of individuals, including: (A) race; (B) religion; (C) color; (D) sex; (E) gender identity; (F) disability; (G) national origin; (H) ancestry; (I) sexual orientation; or (J) age; whether or not the person’s belief or perception was correct.

After debate was commenced on the floor of the senate, Senator Freeman (essentially representing Franklin Twshp. in Indianapolis) offered the following amendment:

“The criteria listed in subsections (a) and (b) do not limit the matters that the court may consider, including bias, in determining the sentence” 

So, if listing the criteria above doesn't limit what the court can consider in determining a sentence, then why do we list them? I deal in litigation on a daily basis; factors and criteria are precisely what people use in the justice system to determine whether they're following the law. Sen. Freeman, in essence, added another section to this hate crimes law that said, "Well, what we said before about protecting certain historically downtrodden populations doesn't really carry any weight."

And here's the punchline: your own senator, Senator Mike Young, like the good party man he is, voted with the majority of his Republican party colleagues to make sure that those in the minority in Indiana, whether the ethnic, gender, religious, or other minority, got the message loud and clear that they don't care about you.

If you voted for Mike Young, you voted for this. If you don't like this, don't ever vote for Mike Young again.