“It should be clear that hate crime law has nothing to do with improving our law but rather with creating favored political classes. Something that should be hateful to everyone…”

–Examiner Columnist Star Parker

In a column decrying the passage of the recent Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a disgruntled Star Parker masquerades her animus of sexual minorities as a displaced projection of black victimology. Somewhere in the Old Testament of her mind, it makes sense to reduce hate-crime murders to 20-yard penalties in a football game, or pretend that she as a black woman has not benefited from federal statutes that explicitly list race and gender as protected categories of discrimination.

In some 17 poorly written paragraphs of vulnerable dissent and lazy analogies, Star Parker tells us nothing more than how she foolishly misses the point; how she cannot fathom the hate of blackness and gayness as intersectional realities that can be experienced by one human being; and how she cannot understand how the murders of Derrion Albert and Matthew Shephard are different.

But perhaps the most appalling and arguably dangerous part of Parker’s column is her implicit call to action—a sneaky message for Black America to hate this recently passed legislation, and possibly those individuals whom it protects. As a gay African-American, I know all too well that the black community is no welcoming bastion of openly diverse sexuality.

Just ask Delonte Richardson, a 23-year old college student at the University of the District of Columbia and a survivor of a hate-crime he lived through some 5 years ago.

In a quiet black middle class community—a well-kept suburban subdivision in Fort Washington, Maryland, his attackers took him by surprise with a crow-bar to his head in daylight.  But as Delonte reminds me, “it wasn’t just what they did to me that made it an act of hate; it’s what they said as well.”

In a series of expletives containing what he calls the “f-bomb,” he tells me word for word everything his attackers said.  “I just remember laying there on the ground, seeing three guys in Northface coats running away, shouting the word ‘faggot’.” Richardson goes on to tell me that he didn’t realize he was bleeding until his mom had to take him to the hospital, where he received some 17 surgical staples for his injuries.

Luckily Delonte survived.  But the same cannot be said for young people like Sakia Gunn (15), Tyli’a Mack (21), or Steen Keith Fenrich (19), all of whom lost their lives in hate-crimes motivated by their perceived sexual identities, but who might be alive today had such a law like the Hate Crimes Prevention Act been enacted in 1968.

But surely these young people—these members of Star Parker’s alleged “favored political class” were not hailed subjects in the talking points of far-left progressive lobbyists on Capitol Hill.  After all, none of their names are in the law’s legislative title. Lest we remember the recently murdered Navy Seaman August Provost, whose death was enabled by the atmosphere spawn by “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” we’d be foolish not to acknowledge the tension between sexuality and race.

When I ask about the new law’s possible impact on his community, Delonte bitterly replies “I expect a lot of black people to start being arrested, now.  Maybe now they’ll think twice before they do or say something hateful.”

The “saying something hateful” part is an issue shared by many opponents of the new law.  Accusations that the Hate Crimes Prevention Act will infringe on free speech have flown violently in the face of fact.  Before the Act’s passage, Sen. Sam Brownback added an amendment which sought to explicitly ensure that the new law would not infringe on First Amendment rights, but the language was significantly watered down when it reached legislative conference.

But those of us who are often the subject of hate-speech and hate-bias related crimes know that hiding behind First Amendment arguments is the first sign of cowardice and distilled bigotry.  There are plenty of tombstones that speak of the wedded accompaniment of ill-speech and malevolent action. No need to pretend that there isn’t a great big bold neon line between speech that is constitutional and speech that is not.

Seemingly unmasked by her hypocrisy, Parker voices no grievances with the fact that the categories of race, color, religion, and national origin have enjoyed many years of explicit protection under the federal hate-crimes umbrella.

Since the addition of sexual orientation is so “weakening and damaging to our country,” I challenge Ms. Parker to explicitly publish her denouncement of every protected status that falls under hate-crimes protection; including, but not limited to race, gender, and religion—all of which are categories under which she enjoys protection.

In the meantime, Delonte’s attackers remain at-large—their crowbar bearing the stain of their hate.

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