On Tuesday I wrote about the gay bashing of 15-year-old Michigan teen Steven Harmon. Two slightly older teens called him “faggot” and “queer” as they beat him, resulting in a fracture to a bone near his right eye, among other injuries.
Yesterday, the two gay-bashers were arrested:
The boys, ages 15 and 16, have been charged as juveniles with aggravated assault, the newspaper reported.
Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Fink told the Gazette a state statute on hate crimes protects crimes based on race, color, religion, gender and national origin, but not sexual orientation.
“Their comments were totally inappropriate, but what we charge are not their comments but what they do as far as their behavior,” Fink told the newspaper. “We’re not looking at why they did it. We’re looking at what they did.“
And this is where a better understanding of what hate crimes really are is vital. To paraphrase Judy Shepard, hate crimes are us much about terrorizing the individual as they are about terrorizing a community and so deserve a different and more severe kind of punishment.
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