Crazy Like a Foxx

Chances are you’ve already seen the widely-criticized comments of Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) in Congress yesterday concerning her opposition to a proposed bill to expand hate crimes legislation. The reason it’s getting so much press is that she referred to the idea that homophobia was the motive for the murder of 21-year-old gay man Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming in the late ’90s as a “hoax.” If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

Now, I’ve always had a distaste for Virginia Foxx, but up until I haven’t had a good reason. Oh, except for her absolutely loony voting record, which pretty much reads as a straight ballot of blindly picking the most far-right option she could on every single issue that confronted her (if you just can’t get enough of the honorable Mrs. Foxx, you can check out her voting record here). She’s a perfect example of how the Republican Party (with the exceptions of Sens. Collins and Snowe of Maine) has become a fringe group of ultra-conservatives whose refusal to give up their Gods, Guns, ‘n’ Gays M.O., even in the face of far more important issues, has limited their relevancy to the most socially backward parts of the south and midwest.

I’m not going to even bother with going into what she actually said, just because it’s so absurd (though I think it’s worth noting that she gets even bigger stupid bitch points for making these statements while Matthew Shepard’s mother was listening in the gallery). I’ll just quote Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and leave it at that, because nothing more really needs to be said: “She should be ashamed. That is unreal, unbelievable. The law enforcement people and almost every reasonable person I know believes he was murdered because he was gay.”

So okay, enough said. What really interests me about the situation isn’t Foxx’s position itself. Obviously, her reasons for opposing this hate crimes bill are too stupid to even be considered if this statement was any indication. Incidentally, what makes me so convinced of her stupidity (as opposed to merely being sincere but misguided) is that there’s absolutely no way it was necessary to belittle a long-dead murder victim to make her point. There’s plenty of validity to be found on her side of the debate; she, unfortunately, just decided to go with the dumbest reason she could find.

Why I’m interested is that the hate crime thing gives me more pause than almost any other political issue. As a gay man myself, I would have to be a fool to presume that I have the objective wisdom to determine to what extent my own subjective interests play into my opinions. But among people I’ve talked to about politics, and specifically gay rights, I think I can come off as a contrarian, maybe even with a little dash of self-loathing thrown in. It’s a product of that same recognition of my inability to trust myself to be objective because of my personal background, so I try to be as cautious as possible with my viewpoints on gay rights issues (although the two sides of my political personality — the side whose first priority is as much as freedom as possible for everybody and the side that subjectively wants as many advantages for myself as possible as a gay man — usually mesh much better than they happen to in the unusual case of hate crimes).

My politics, if I have to label them, could probably most accurately be described as liberal-libertarian, which in my mind means that I put the highest premium possible on any and all kinds of human rights and freedoms, and to me, legislating not only against a person’s crime but against what a person is thinking while they commit a crime seems like an infringement on the rights of an accused, and even a convicted person. It’s hard for me to see how I could reconcile a stance in support of hate crimes legislation with my stance on, say, gay marriage, or tax exemptions for churches, or my opposition to the prosecution of Holocaust deniers in many European countries (something I’m sure I’ll get to at a later date), because they all fall under the category of the government punishing and/or rewarding people for who they inherently are — and, as much as we might find it distasteful, some people are inherently (that’s probably the wrong word for it, actually) homophobes, or racists, or avid fans of Deal or No Deal. Add to all of this that, to me, one of the most infuriating things about our American political culture — and maybe about human nature in general — is our barbaric, bloodlustful, vengeful instinct to try to impinge on the rights of society’s most deviant members as far as we’re able, and you can see why my instinct in cases like this is to be at least wary, and maybe even flat-out rejecting, of hate crimes legislation.

[It might also be worth noting, although it’s a little off topic, that I’ve always harbored some negative feelings towards the Shepards ever since they called so vociferously in court for the execution of their son’s killers in court, even going so far as to try to put to rest rumors that Matthew was opposed to the death penalty in order that it might look like he would have been in favor of his killers being put to death. While I can’t imagine what they must have been going through, I still have to say that I found it petty and distasteful.]

But, to be honest, I never really got down to really thinking critically about my convictions and forming a real opinion for myself. Essentially, what it came down to was that my prejudice against the idea of the government anointing itself as a second-rate thought police won out over my prejudice against despicable redneck fag-killers. I didn’t really take the time to educate myself.

Then I watched the Rachel Maddow show the night of the Foxx incident (yes, I’m a total star-fucker for the progressive news media, sue me… but for the record, I’m not a huge fan of the show’s decision to make their graphic for this segment the now-famous photo of Shepard under the words “HATE CRIME” in giant red block lettering). Matthew Shepard’s mother was the guest, and of course she took questions about Foxx’s statement and about the hate crimes bill in general. What really interested me about what she had to say was what I found to be a pretty convincing (albeit brief) argument in favor of the legislation, which was based on a point that admittedly hadn’t occurred to me before. It’s a classic example of my freedom-loving idealism having a head-on collision with stark, infuriating American reality. Here’s the video; the part I’m referring to occurs mostly from the 5:00 mark to the 6:30 mark.

Now, to be clear, I’m still uncomfortable with the idea of a “hate crime.” There’s something to be said for what is probably the most common argument of hate crime legislation opponents; namely, that practically every violent crime involves some degree and species of hatred. But that might be more semantics than substance. Mrs. Shepard’s insistence that hate crimes are designed to send a message to an entire community might carry a little more weight, but I doubt very much that Matthew Shepard’s killers (who were, for one thing, probably drunk at the time) had any intention of sending a message to all the faggots out there, though I suppose it’s a possibility. As far as I can see, they were simply taking their bigotry to its most violent logical conclusion. Although it certainly did send a message to the country, I don’t think they were hoping that would be the case. They just hated gay people, and here was one right in front of them whom they could use as a canvas for an expression of their hatred. Murders that are meant to send a message to or intimidate an entire community of people usually take shape on a larger scale and involve more organization, like a lynch mob, or the Rwandan génocidaires.

But the one thing she said that might have started me on the path to being persuaded was her very valid point — the one that seemed most totally grounded in harsh realities rather than in what some might call a “liberal fantasy” of bigoted scare tactics — that sometimes the prejudice that motivated the crime extends to the local authorities, who can therefore not be trusted to do their jobs properly. It’s unfortunate but often (I assume) true. If I were Matthew Shepard’s parents, I’m not sure if I would trust the sheriff’s department of a small town in Wyoming to do much either.

And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I still don’t know how I would have voted if I were a member of Congress (though the bill passed by such an enormous margin it probably woudn’t have mattered), but if I had heard the argument Mrs. Shepard made in the above video I think I might have been persuaded. Please let me know what you think; I’m far from reaching a concensus with my own conscience on this and I could use as many outside points of view as possible. And if you made it this far, thanks for wading through my befuddlement with me.