by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n New Jersey jury on Friday convicted a Rutgers freshman of \u201cbias intimidation,\u201d among several other charges. Dharum Ravi had set up a webcam in the dorm room he shared with Tyler Clementi, and then posted footage online of Clementi being intimate with another man. Three days later Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. Ravi faces up to ten years in prison or deportation to India.<\/p>\n This verdict promises to have malign effects beyond the problems of hate-speech laws already long recognized. Most important, it will make it easier for Muslim organizations to achieve in the United States what they have in Europe: criminalizing legitimate and fact-based criticism of Islam by disguising it as \u201chate speech,\u201d thus enlisting our criminal justice system in the enforcement of Sharia-based blasphemy laws.<\/p>\n Ravi\u2019s conviction has dangerously expanded the already over-broad and subjective statutes against \u201chate crimes,\u201d which are for the most part based on words and attitudes. Such laws are an attempt to criminalize preferences disapproved of by some political ideologies, and they are based on dubious social psychology theories about how \u201chate speech\u201d creates a \u201cclimate of fear\u201d that legitimizes and hence increases physical violence or harassment against protected groups. The problem with such laws, however, is that in practice they are selective, protecting politically favored constituencies while excluding other groups such as Christians, Jews, straight white males, or conservatives. Worse yet, what constitutes \u201chate speech\u201d is highly subjective and reductive, ignoring the specific contexts and intentions that contribute to any speech act. Finally, under the Constitution, we are free to dislike whomever we wish for whatever reason we wish, no matter how much such dislike disturbs others. And subject to strict \u201cfighting words\u201d\u00a0constraints<\/a>, under the First Amendment we have the right to express that dislike in speech, including speech others may find offensive.<\/p>\n In short, \u201chate crime\u201d laws represent another dangerous government intrusion into social and political life at the expense of freedom, all in an attempt to create some utopian world in which nobody ever feels bad, and social relations are without strife and conflict. Yet this goal is impossible given human nature and the great variety of people and their beliefs, some of which they passionately hold and consider foundational to their identities and the meaning of their lives. In a free society that by law gives people the right to express these beliefs and preferences, there inevitably will be clashes, and these disagreements won\u2019t always be conducted with the decorum of a Jane Austen novel. Thus freedom of speech necessarily entails accepting that occasionally one will be insulted or offended. But that\u2019s the price we pay for that freedom, for the alternative is the creation of legal limitations that inhibit speech by using the coercive power of the state to threaten or silence disagreeable political views.<\/p>\n The more dangerous consequence of such legislation, the illegitimate expansion of the scope of hate crime offenses, is what has taken place in the Ravi case. What Ravi did could be considered mean or boorish, but given he was a freshman in college at the time, such behavior is to be expected of a callow youth. There was no evidence presented that Ravi personally was homophobic, no past record of harassing or intimidating homosexuals. In fact, there was not any \u201chate speech\u201d at all, just a subjective interpretation of his actions as the fuzzy crime \u201cbias intimidation.\u201d As a result, this verdict has broadened the categories \u201chate\u201d and \u201cbias\u201d to criminalize immaturity \u2014 as long as the victim is a member of a protected group. If the roles were reversed, and Clementi had posted videos of Ravi having sex with a woman, nobody would have cared how humiliated or shamed Ravi became, even if he committed suicide.<\/p>\n As a result of this expansion, this verdict contributes to that \u201cchilling\u201d effect on free speech that the ACLU selectively complains about. People who disagree about the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, for example, or resist the attempt to normalize homosexuality, now face the possibility that their opinions, if expressed in ways subjectively interpreted as \u201churtful,\u201d could be construed as \u201cbias intimidation\u201d or a \u201chate crime\u201d or \u201cbullying,\u201d and hence subject to legal sanctions. After all, if normal freshman boorishness can be criminalized, anything can. Already the threat of such prosecution lurks behind every charge of \u201csexism\u201d or \u201cracism\u201d or \u201chomophobia.\u201d We saw this tactic in the recent uproar over Rush Limbaugh\u2019s comments about Sandra Fluke, which aWashington Post<\/em>\u00a0blogger called \u201chate speech\u201d that \u201ccrossed into the realm of sexual harassment.\u201d That is, as something that the power of the government can punish. Such threats can lead to self-censorship and an environment that is hostile to free speech.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s an even more sinister development of \u201chate speech\u201d sanctions that this verdict facilitates. That is the ongoing effort of Muslim organizations to smuggle Islamic \u201cblasphemy\u201d prohibitions into \u201chate speech\u201d laws. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has been trying for years to get the UN to codify Islamic Sharia blasphemy laws in secular international law. And President Obama is supportive of such efforts. In his infamous Cairo speech of 2009, he proclaimed his commitment to fighting \u201cnegative stereotypes about Islam.\u201d In December 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited the OIC to Washington to \u201cexchange ideas\u201d and \u201cdiscuss implementation\u201d of the President\u2019s goal. A few months earlier, representatives of Islamic advocacy groups had met with the Department of Justice to press for ways to label criticism of Islam \u201creligious bigotry and hate,\u201d as the president of the Islamic Society of North America put it.<\/p>\n We already know where this attempt to criminalize criticism of Islam in the guise of \u201chate speech\u201d will lead, for we have seen its consequences in Europe in the hate-speech charges leveled against Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, and numerous others \u2014 over 40 prosecutions since 2000 just in the paragon of \u201ctolerance,\u201d Denmark \u2014 simply for stating patent facts about Islamic theology written in the Koran. Nor can those accused turn to the European Court of Human Rights, which has decided that the European Convention on Human Rights does not protect \u201chate speech.\u201d Nor can relief be found in the UN\u2019s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which likewise sanctions free speech on the subjective basis that \u201cany advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.\u201d So too the UN and its utopian Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which obliges states to criminalize \u201call dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred [and] incitement to racial discrimination.\u201d When it comes to Islam, free speech in Europe and international law is, if not dead, on life support.<\/p>\n