First let me be clear. If two people in a same sex relationship find themselves in a loving, lasting situation, all the more power to them. I know several who are. I also know several men who, because of the stigma associated with homosexuality at the time, had to keep their orientation secret and sought their relationship in the back alleys of darkness. One of them, a cousin, contracted AIDS and died from it. I suspect that many such men would be alive had they been able to find and sustain a loving lasting relationship openly and freely.

Thank goodness, some of that stigma and secrecy is being lifted. Not enough, but some. I see it in some of the students I teach. Some are not afraid and this is a good thing. Others, however, are still fearful of repercussions from family and friends. Oddly enough, it is the students themselves who, at least in the school I teach, are more accepting, and not the adults.

That said, I wish to discuss two issues here, and please allow me to play devil's advocate for a few moments. The first issue is gay marriage and the second is hate crime legislation.

A large portion of the American population is adamantly against the idea of gay marriage. Now, a lot of polls indicate that the mindset is changing. Still, people lie to pollsters. When they get behind that curtain to vote, however, they tell the truth. I am sorry I don't have the exact total, but a sizable number of states have gone to the voters and asked if gay marriage should be allowed. In almost every case, voters have said no. They said no in California. What the recent court decision effectively did was ignore the will of the voters of California. It is ironic to me that many people cite the will of the voters as a reason for supporting a candidate or a piece of legislation, but are quick to ignore that same will of the voters if the majority does not support their candidate or particular legislation. If, for example, the majority of voters said offshore oil drilling should be allowed, quite a number of people would still fight tooth and nail against any proposal to lift the current ban. To hell with the will of the voters, they would claim. That is what I see happening with gay marriage proposals. As I said above, if two people can find a loving lasting relationship, all the more power to them. But they still have to convince the majority of voters to go along with it. In effect, the in your face, cramming it down the throat of people who are opposed to it does nothing to change their minds toward acceptance. Instead it drives the anti-gay feelings under the surface where it simmers and festers and, as Langston Hughes pointed out, it explodes.

This brings me to the issue of hate crime legislation.

Gays have been beaten and killed because of their sexual preference. Blacks have suffered the same fate because of their skin color. Japanese Americans were confined to camps in WW2, Poles were beaten by Irish, Native Americans were put on reservations. One of the members here has been physically assaulted because he is gay. All because of hate and mistrust and ignorance. And that is wrong. People need to be punished for their crimes to the fullest extent allowed by law. If someone is killed, the murderer should spend the rest of his or her life in prison. A person convicted of assault should spend as many years behind bars as the law proscribes.

It is hate crime legislation with which I have a sincere concern. Maybe it's because I am such a believer in the Constitution and the First Amendment. Maybe it's something Oliver Wendell Holmes said:

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought -- not free thought only for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought we hate.

As I said, criminals need to be punished. Those idiots who attacked the member here need to be punished. But the minute we start tacking on extra time because the crime is motivated by hate, we are stepping into dangerous territory of punishing crime for the thoughts of the person. A murder is a murder. It doesn't matter what motivated the murder.

When two of the same crimes are committed, when one is punished more it sends the wrong message. As Nat Hentoff points out in "Hate Crime Laws: The Real Message"

[...]if someone is sent to prison for a long term because it is reasonably clear that he or she is indeed bigoted [...] This still sends a message to a person who has been badly injured by an attacker without a trace of bias -- that his or her wounds are of less importance to the community.

I don't think as a nation we should be going there. As with convincing voters about gay marriage, we need to change the way people think, not putting them in prison for it.