Interestingly enough, given the ongoing debate over hate-crimes legislation, this article popped up on CNN and other sources today.
Hits all the right buttons, doesn't it? Red state, "cowboy town", "effeminate" professor, allegedly found "burned and bound", and so forth. Just what is needed to convince everyone that, by gum, we need to codify into law that local law enforcement is too underfunded, incompetent, and bigoted to do their jobs properly, and we need the Feds to step in and nail those homophobic bumpkins.
Problem is this.....the case has been open for a while. Since December, actually -- and people have been speculating on it for months.
Now, on some levels, I do understand why this tripped the wire; there is a press conference scheduled today on the case whose announcement doubtless caught someone's eye, somewhere (and yes, we will carry the news as we receive it).
But the simple fact of the matter is that this was going way under the radar of anyone caring about it until someone had the bright idea, in my opinion, that it would help explain why hate-crimes laws are allegedly needed. The fact that a man had vanished and died under suspicious circumstances concerned no one nationally for months, appearing only at a time when it provided convenient "proof" for what Democrats and the minorities to which they pander wanted.
To me, that explains the whole purpose of this proposed legislation: ideology.
If the point is to expand resources available to local law enforcement and to allow the Feds to step in when necessary, that should be done based on the crime, not on whether or not it was the result of a specific motivation.
But that doesn't make sexual orientation special, does it?
UPDATE: Weird, very weird.
No comments:
Post a Comment