When Will it be a Hate Crime?

Omeed Aziz Popal takes his SUV and runs over many people in San Francisco, near a Jewish neighborhood and a Jewish Center and it’s just “road rage” according to Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The Anchoress is on a roll with this one today and I agree with every word she writes.

Can you imagine, if someone had (God forbid!) driven a car into 14 gay people, how quickly the press would have managed to cover the story? Can you imagine that Mayor Newsom would call it “road rage” and suggest that there really probably wasn’t a “hate crime” attached to the action?

The use of “hate crime” is wrong too. “Hate” can go to motive, but does it really make the crime any more of a crime? Harry Blow may have had more reasons to “hate” Joe Schmoe than Harry knew (or thought) that Joe was gay. Maybe Joe had done something in the past that festered in Harry’s memory…

related: Hate Crimes and Terrorism