It’s time to remove South Carolina from the list of states without a hate crimes law

And then there were three.

Recently Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law to enforce stronger punishments for those whose crimes are motivated by a victim’s color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender or disability.

Kemp’s move added Georgia to the vast majority of states in America that have “hate crime” laws on their books. In fact, there are only three states that don’t have such laws: Arkansas, Wyoming and, yes, South Carolina.

Of course, the fact that there is no hate crime law in South Carolina isn’t due to a lack of effort to have one enacted: year after year, variations on potential hate crime bills have been proposed without success — even after particularly egregious crimes.

Like:

▪ The 2007 murder of Sean Kennedy, a young gay man who was killed in Greenville by a punch so brutal that it broke all of the bones in his face and led to his death less than a day later.

The lawyers for Stephen Moller, Kennedy’s attacker, stressed that Sean’s sexuality wasn’t a factor in this act of violence — but many pieces of evidence brought that claim into question, including a viciously homophobic voicemail that Moller left for one of Kennedy’s friends after killing Sean.

▪ The 2015 murder of nine Black worshipers at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, a senseless killed carried out by Dylann Roof, a self-described white nationalist who admitted targeting the church because he knew there would be a large number of Black people inside it.

Inevitably, however, the horrors of these vicious acts and countless others are never enough to turn the tide and stir South Carolina’s lawmakers to pass a hate crime law. And this is despite the fact that Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston have all passed ordinances against hate crimes that hold prejudiced assailants accountable in South Carolina’s three largest cities.

Weak arguments

Unfortunately, the opponents of a state hate crime law have increasingly seized on one particular argument to block the passage of such legislation: they contend that such a law would infringe on our right to free speech and turn our legal system into an Orwellian-style coalition of “thought police.”

But this argument is not only untrue, it’s a gross misrepresentation of the legal process: hate crimes are defined not by the person’s statements but by the actions they incite. A random or senseless crime must be proven to be — beyond reasonable doubt — motivated by hate and discrimination in order to solicit the more severe consequences.

In fact, you could argue that hate crime legislation actually helps to uphold the First Amendment because it gives us the freedom to express ourselves, hold firm to our varied beliefs and practice our religion of choice without fear of persecution or retaliation.

A second argument that is often used by critics — and one also easy to disprove — is that hate crime laws can be found to be unconstitutional, a counterpoint bolstered by the history of what’s taken place in Georgia over the years. Some 16 years ago Georgia first passed hate crime legislation, but the law was overturned a few years later by the state’s Supreme Court.

Why?

Because the statute was deemed to be too vague; indeed, the bill’s imprecise language was a major reason why it was able to gain support with many conservative lawmakers in the first place.

But now that Georgia’s new law includes an extensive definition of what constitutes a hate crime, any concerns that it can be repealed or overturned have been eliminated.

Why it’s needed

Some may ask why it’s necessary to continue to push for a hate crime law in South Carolina.

Well, our state’s lack of hate crime protections has become a topic of conversation recently thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement’s efforts to force a majority of the population to re-examine the failings of our justice system — and the implicit biases and prejudices that are stitched into every fiber of our social fabric.

And while there are plenty of other reforms to debate and possibly implement, passing a hate crime bill is South Carolina seems like the easiest place to start.

It is a simple gesture that is long overdue in our state.

A Greenville native, Robert Grand is an artist and writer.