Alabama House approves hate crimes bill

By Jennifer J. Foster

The Alabama House of Representatives today passed a bill that expands the state’s hate crimes law to include sexual orientation.

I wrote a column about hate crimes last fall. You can read it here. If you saw it then, or if you are just reading it now, you know that I am no fan of hate crimes legislation. I don’t buy the argument that certain crimes hurt society worse because of the motive third parties ascribe to them; for that to be true, the opposite would also have to be true—that the non-hate crimes, though they are of the same variety, are somehow less injurious to society.

In other words, let’s say you have two murders. Authorities tag Murder A a hate crime, but they decide Murder B is just your garden-variety killing.

The reasoning behind hate crimes legislation holds that Murder A should be punished more severely than Murder B, because the killers in the first case have caused more damage to the societal framework.

Tell that to the family of murder victim B.

But there’s another reason to oppose hate crimes legislation, and it has to do with Lady Justice: Legal tradition holds that justice is blind. But with hate crimes legislation, not only is Lady Justice not blind, she’s peering into your soul with the Hubble telescope and poring over it with archeological tools.

And that brings us to the third problem with hate crimes legislation: Third parties—police, district attorneys, judges and other extensions of the state—putting themselves in the position of judging your thoughts instead of your deeds. In effect, they make themselves mindreaders. If they get your thoughts wrong, you could find yourself being punished unfairly. But let’s say they get them right ... do you really want the government punishing you for your thoughts? If you don’t think this is fertile ground for persecution to cross paths with prosecution, I give you McCarthyism.

Hate crimes laws are the enemies of equality. With any luck, this bill will fall victim to the usual antics of the Alabama Senate; State Sen. “Philibuster” Poole could actually take credit for doing something positive for this state.

Failing that, I will implore Gov. Riley to veto this bad bill. If Alabama is interested in equal protection under the law, the State Legislature ought to be repealing its existing hate crimes statute, not expanding it.

Remembering Sam Ervin, Jr.

By Jennifer J. Foster

Today marks the anniversary of the death of one of the most outstanding public servants of modern American history.

U.S. Sen. Sam Ervin, Jr. (D-NC), died on this day in 1985. As NPR tells us, Ervin served for 20 years in the Senate, but he made his national name when he chaired the Watergate hearings that brought down President Richard Nixon.

I admire Ervin for a cornerstone of truth he offered to Americans as their government was shaken. He said:

“If men and women of capacity refuse to take part in politics and government, they condemn themselves, as well as the people, to the punishment of living under bad government.“

It’s an eloquent way of saying, “Americans, your fate—for good or ill—lies in your hands. Don’t fumble.“

It is my favorite government quote of all time.

Read more about this great public servant—including some other great quotes—here.

True survival

By Jennifer J. Foster

I read this story earlier this week, and I’ve been meaning to post it here since then.

If you’ve ever wanted to know what real survival is about, check out this piece from the Associated Press. It is a harrowing yet inspiring tale of two men whose lives were forever linked by evil on the most unimaginable scale. They somehow survived and managed to find one another 65 years later.

There is survival—living through a car crash, a surgery, things like that—and then there is survival, when you can live through something so unspeakable that it endangers your spirit as much as your body.

These men have been to a place and seen things that only those who were there can understand.

They are survivors of the latter type.

The Miss USA/gay marriage controversy

By Jennifer J. Foster

Who would have thought that the Miss USA pageant, with its plastic surgery-enhanced contestants and stringy bikinis, would end up being the scene of the biggest religious controversy since Roy Moore?

But it was. You have surely heard by now about Miss California, Carrie Prejean, and her exchange with judge Perez Hilton.

Let’s set the scene: Prejean is a conservative Christian. Hilton is an openly gay entertainment blogger. And California is still smoldering from the bitter, divisive—yet ultimately successful—campaign to restrict marriage to its traditional definition.

According to articles I read, pageant watchers seem to agree that Prejean was the frontrunner in the late stages of Sunday night’s competition as the contestants entered the daunting Q&A session. This segment has been the scene of many a public relations disaster in recent years, not the least of which was the poor contestant from South Carolina who gave that completely unintelligible answer about ... education.

So the beautiful people held their breath as Prejean strode to the microphone to receive her question from the judges.

Hilton beamed as he asked Prejean for her thoughts on gay marriage. Prejean kept smiling, but you could tell it wasn’t the question she wanted.

You can watch the exchange on YouTube or on any one of a zillion other places on the web, but the bottom line was this: Prejean opposes gay marriage, and Hilton made her pay.

Sure, Prejean could have been more eloquent. She seemed to stumble for a moment, almost as if she was trying to find a way to walk a line that wouldn’t offend those on either side of this issue. It led to her using the unfortunate phrase, “Same-sex marriage, or opposite,“ which threatens to find its way into bad-pageant-answer lore. But Prejean eventually found her footing and stated clearly that she doesn’t believe in gay marriage, because those are the values she was taught.

A few minutes later, Miss North Carolina was wearing the crown.

I read an article that detailed the judges’ responsibilities during the interview portion of the contest. According to the rules, they were to rank the top five contestants from 1 to 5 based on their answers. Hilton, in between personal attacks on Prejean that included calling her a “b——“ and continuing online rants on his web site, said that he gave Prejean a 0 for her answer. (Of course, Hilton is as much a bigot as he claims homophobes are, but let’s not trouble him with trifling inconsistencies.)

Either Perez Hilton is lying to the world about how he scored Carrie Prejean, or he broke the rules of the contest.

For her part, Prejean has been outspoken—if not that her politically unpopular answer cost her the crown, then certainly that the question was a test of her faith. Meanwhile, Hollywood celebrities galore are lining up to bash her, calling her a bigot, and worse, for doing nothing more than answering honestly the question she was asked.

This goes to what I was just saying on Saturday about Americans no longer knowing how to respect the political opinions of those with whom they disagree.

Here’s the deal: If these beauty pageants are going to venture out from the safety of the candidates’ PR-friendly platforms and delve into the difficult issues of our time, they are going to have to grow up a bit. They are going to have to respect the reality that their contestants, though they share spectacular beauty, nutrition regimens and pageant consultants, may have different ideas about the world.

If judges want to ask about candidates’ political opinions, they need to respect them.

If the Miss USA pageant wants to retain any credibility, its owners need to come forth and state strongly and unequivocally that it was Perez Hilton—not Carrie Prejean—who was out of line on Sunday night. If they don’t want to offend their viewers with the possibility that their contestants may oppose gay marriage, then they shouldn’t allow their judges to ask questions about it.

I read a story yesterday that explored whether Prejean has a case for discrimination based on her religion. I’m not usually one to cheerlead disaffected citizens into civil court, but I think Prejean should chase this suit—not for monetary gain, but to extract from the Miss USA pageant the apology she should receive and the rules clarification that should be made in the wake of this ridiculous fiasco.

And I would dig it if she took Perez Hilton to civil court, too, for emotional pain and suffering and the trauma he has inflicted upon her reputation with his slanderous personal attacks on her character. It would be great if she could get a little money from him ... a little consolation prize for her charity, of course.

Pulitzers announced

By Jennifer J. Foster

The newspaper industry might be collapsing in on itself, but that didn’t stop the good folks at Columbia University from handing out journalism’s most prestigious awards.

The 2009 Putlizer Prizes were announced yesterday, and The New York Times led the field with five wins. (In an amusing aside, The New York Observer’s Matt Haber and Reid Pillifant pondered how NYT EE Bill Keller’s feelings about the Pulitzers must have changed over the past 12 months.) The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, a newspaper I happen to believe sets the absolute standard for excellence in print journalism, also took home two awards—one for national reporting for its work with PolitiFact, which became an essential tool for millions of voters seeking to sift the truth out of the mud during the 2008 election cycle, and one for feature writing. On the latter, the winning piece by Lane DeGregory will break your heart and give you hope, all at once.

A couple of notes about other wins:

Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post won the coveted award for commentary. I always study the work of the winners in this category. Sure, I hope someday to follow in their footsteps. But I also appreciate a good argument, regardless of the issue. When persuasive prose is your business, it can only help to read the work of the best in your field.

If you’re wondering how the demise of the newspaper industry affects your life, consider the work of Las Vegas Sun reporter Alexandra Berzon, who won the public service prize. The Pulitzer committee noted Berzon’s “courageous” efforts to expose “the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions.“

Did you catch that? People were dying. Berzon checked it out and found that rules were being haphazardly enforced or ignored altogether. She found that those deaths shouldn’t have happened. And that made the folks in power tighten things up.

In other words, through her work (read it here), Alexandra Berzon has saved lives.

That’s a public service if ever there was one.

On a related note, on yesterday’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,“ Jeffrey Brown discussed with industry standards Robert Rosenthal and Deborah Nelson the fate of investigative newspaper reporting—something Brown called an “increasingly vulnerable area of coverage” as newspapers struggle to survive. Read the transcript here.

Save investigative reporting. It’s a worthy cause supported by lovers of democracy and fans of transparency—and a bunch of families of construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip.