Georgia’s Republican governor just signed the hate-crime bill passed by Georgia’s Republican legislature. That leaves only three states—Arkansas one of them—without a hate-crime law.
A hate crime is one inflicted because of disdain for the victim’s race, religion, national origin, disability and, in the best such laws, sexual orientation and gender identity. A hate-crime law tacks an additional punishment onto an existing criminal conviction if hate can be demonstrated based on any of those factors.
The arguments against a hate-crime law are that all crimes are crimes; that punishing hate is punishing thought, and that hating one group is no worse than hating anyone else.
But it’s been a losing argument, considering that 47 states have rejected it and embraced the prevailing concept that protections are needed for harm based on race hate, gender hate, gay hate, religious hate and disability hate, and that additional time in jail is appropriate for such special kinds of evil.
If a hate-crime law is to be made, right now would seem to be the optimal time.
A new hate-crime initiative in Arkansas got started last week in a way that managed both to be hopeful and bumpy.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he’d sign such a bill. His nephew, state Sen. Jim Hendren, a conservative who has become enlightened on racial reconciliation issues in part through a friendship with Sen. Joyce Elliott, had been working on such a bill with state Sen. Nicole Clowney, a liberal, and white, state representative from Fayetteville.
When that news broke, blacks initially recoiled against the exclusion of Elliott and the notion that two white people would carry the banner.
The bill drafted by Hendren and Clowney also contained a provision affirming that sexual orientation and gender identity were getting no protections or rights other than the stated protections against hate crimes.
That struck the LGBTQ movement as unnecessary and hurtful, and it certainly was unnecessary. And hurtful.
The section’s purpose most likely was to try to assuage a few right-wingers who might vote for a simple hate-crime bill if they could assure their church folks back home that they hadn’t conceded to gay rights otherwise.
The snafu regarding Elliott and the black caucus seemed to get worked out.
The other problem is probably a greater divide, but the brutal math is that it affects fewer legislative votes.
What we have is a case study in how legislation that’s generally good can get bogged down in ancillary detail that seems secondary unless that ancillary detail amounts to special meanness directed at you.
From the outside, my view is simply to focus on the ball of a hate-crime law. But, for some people, the pitcher is throwing two or three balls at them at once, and one is a fastball high and inside.
In the end, Democrats will lock down unanimously or near-unanimously in favor of the bill. Passage will hinge on whether enough conservative Republicans will join them.
In that regard, I made hate-crime inquiries of the declared and/or prospective Republican gubernatorial candidates for 2022, believing their positions would help signal likely Republican legislative attitudes.
Hendren is pondering such a race, and we know how he feels.
Lieutenant Governor Tim Griffin told me: “My father was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan for standing up against racism as a pastor, and he taught me that hate is sinful and evil. I support enhanced criminal penalties that will make Arkansans safer, but we must take the time to get it right and ensure that religious liberty and free speech rights are protected.”
I must make the point that free speech rights won’t be in jeopardy. You could still say without sanction that you hated … uh, let’s say, trans-gender persons. But if you then got convicted of beating up a transgender person, having said that could lead to a supplement on your sentence.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said: “It is past time that Arkansas unequivocally takes a stance against hate crimes. Like I mentioned last August, I wholeheartedly applaud these efforts to hold those who discriminate accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
She says “unequivocally.” She doesn’t have any caveats. She didn’t say that she supported this draft bill precisely as written. But I didn’t ask that.
Finally, Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined my invitation to respond, pointing out she is not yet a declared candidate and that she holds no office.
Her silence is unfortunate. She is, after all, Sarah Sanders, the Trumpian celebrity and probable GOP gubernatorial front-runner for 2022. She could have done some good by saying something much like what Griffin and Rutledge said. Maybe she will say that in due time. Her dad as governor was given occasionally to compassionate moderation.
It was the Hutchinsons and Hendrens who were on the right flank in those days.
As the GOP gubernatorial primary of 2022 unfolds, we may need diagrams.
As the hate-crime debate unfolds, we need mostly fairness and decency.
—––––– –––––—
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com . Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.