Suppose that Tony Perkins is walking down the sidewalk in front of the Family Research Council's Washington office when he is struck by an SUV and instantly killed.
Police arrive and find the driver of the SUV dazed but not seriously injured. They take him into custody.
What happens next? Well that depends on what just happened. The basic outline — Tony Perkins killed by impact from an SUV on the sidewalk — doesn't begin to tell us what really happened, if there was a crime and, if so, what kind of crime.
There are many possibilities here:
A sudden mechanical malfunction caused the SUV to veer out of control. So it's an accident, not a crime.
The driver, who had never before manifested any of the symptoms of epilepsy, was struck without warning by a grand mal seizure. Again, an accident.
The driver was intoxicated. That's a crime, even though the driver didn't intend to kill anybody.
The driver gets his jollies by cruising down sidewalks at high speed. He mistakenly thought the sidewalk was clear. Again, even though he didn't intend to kill anybody, this is still a crime (or several crimes).
The driver saw Tony Perkins walking on the sidewalk, gunned his engine and aimed the SUV at him on purpose, fully intending to kill the man. This is homicide and thus, of course, a crime.
Note that the physical act in each case above is the same: SUV strikes Tony Perkins. Note also that the physical result of each case is identical: Tony Perkins is dead. Whether or not this incident was a crime depends on the driver's motive.
Motive is a monumentally important part of our criminal code. Identical deeds can be very different crimes if the motives in the two cases are different. By motive, of course, we mean intent. Call it either one — motive or intent — and it means the same thing: what the criminal is thinking.
If the final case is true in our hypothetical scenario, we still don't know what kind of homicide was committed until we further examine the driver's motive, i.e., what he was thinking.
The driver may have been a demented creep who acted on a sudden, lethally violent impulse.
The driver may have been consumed by a fit of rage after learning, moments earlier, that Perkins was having an affair with his wife, and so he lashed out in an act of passion.
The driver, FRC's executive vice president, Chuck Donovan, resented Perkins and had been plotting this cold-blooded murder for months.
The driver mistakenly* believed that Tony Perkins was gay and he killed him, deliberately, to "send a message to the queers."
Different motives, different crimes and thus appropriately different punishments. Different thoughts, different crimes and thus appropriately different punishments.
The reason I chose Tony Perkins for this little review of the obvious is that Perkins doesn't believe in any of this. He thinks any consideration of motive is out of bounds in a criminal statute. Different punishments for different motives is, to Perkins, legislating "thought crimes."
Thus, Perkins believes, there is no legitimate difference among the cases above — no legitimate legal distinction between manslaughter and first-degree murder. To pretend there is such a distinction is to criminalize motive — to criminalize thought.
Perkins is so gung-ho against this that he has even started a Web site: StopThoughtCrimesLaws.com.
The reason Perkins is so fired up to abolish consideration of motive is because of pending "hate crime" legislation that would protect homosexuals from attacks like the final one described above.
Hate crimes have dominated the news for the last few years, ever since that sunny day when we watched the towers fall in the biggest hate crime of them all. We didn't use the words "hate crime," but that of course is what terrorism is.
Here again is the definition of terrorism in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d):
The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
Notice how much of this definition falls under Perkins' category of "thought crime" —
"premeditated"
"politically motivated"
"intended to influence an audience"
That last is what hate crimes have in common with terrorism. They are "intended to influence an audience," i.e., to terror-ize.
Perkins and the Family Research Council explicitly reject any consideration of this. Take a look at their spin-heavy Q&A: "What's Wrong with Thought Crimes ('Hate Crimes') Laws?":
Why do you call them "thought crimes"?
Violent attacks upon people or property are already illegal, regardless of the motive behind them. With "hate crime" laws, however, people are essentially given one penalty for the actions they engaged in, and an additional penalty for the politically incorrect thoughts that allegedly motivated those actions.
So there's no reason to distinguish terrorists from other criminals just because they may have some "politically incorrect" motives. After all, hijacking, murder and destruction of property are already illegal. Calling it "terrorism" just means "an additional penalty for the politically incorrect thoughts that allegedly motivated those actions."
What the Family Research Council is deliberately ignoring, of course, is the terrorist's intent to "send a message," to "influence an audience," to terrorize.
Yes, assault is a crime, so if a bunch of hoodlums beat somebody up, they have broken the law and deserve to be punished for their actions against their single victim. But if that single victim was intentionally selected because of his or her "actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation," then they are not the only victim. The crime is a form of terrorism, meant to influence an audience. The victim was chosen as a representative of an entire group with the intent of sending a message to that entire group. The perpetrators of such a crime deserve to be punished for their actions against the entire group as well.
Motive matters. Perkins and the FRC want to pretend it doesn't. If they have their way, not only will they weaken the legal protection of minority groups here in America, but they will actually be guilty of Dick Cheney's favorite all-purpose slur. Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council support the terrorists.
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* As far as I know. Perkins strikes me as a member of that minority of homosexuality-obsessed preachers who loves the topic not because of his inner demons, but because it plays well with donors.
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