I raised this issue two years ago, but it might bear another hearing if for no other reason than relief from the drum-beat of Obama-and-Notre-Dame and what-awful-louts-those-bishops-are. Kathleen Parker had a column in last Sundays Washington Post on legislation that proposes to extend the range of hate crimes to include other groups than those named in the original federal law passsed in 1969. Some key paragraphs:

Does our revulsion at hate-motivated crimes justify creating special laws only for certain people? The federal hate-crimes law passed in 1969 created special victims in cases where crimes were found to have been motivated by racism or hatred of a victim's ethnicity, national origin or religion. The legislation being considered would add hatred of the victim's sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.The rationale for these laws has been that a crime against a person for any of the above reasons is really two crimes -- one against the individual and another against the group to which he or she belongs. By that definition, Matthew Shepard's murder may be viewed as a terrorist act against all gays, who would have felt more fearful as a result.When whites lynched blacks with the tacit approval of the state, the entire African American community was terrorized. No one can pretend otherwise. It is this immeasurable horror that hate-crimes laws attempt to address by adding another layer of punishment to the primary crime.

Parker notes two objections: First, the difficulty of reading minds and of concluding that hatred rather than some other factors was the deciding factor; and, second, free-speech issues, as, for example, whether "a passionate preacher's invocation of, say, Leviticus 20:13, which condemns homosexual behavior, be interpreted as conspiracy to commit a hate crime?" On this she notes that "the legislation applies when a physical assault or attempted murder takes place."I confess to not understanding her last paragraph:

As an operating principle, meanwhile, it seems wiser to hear and see the haters rather than criminalize their thoughts and banish them to the underground where their demons can fester and where no law can breach their purpose.

The NY newspapers are full of the story of a Jewish Wesleyan student who was brutally murdered apparently because she was a woman and because she was a Jew. How do our various views apply?