Clarification on hate crimes

We're entrenched in the belief that Utah needs a constitutionally sound, enforceable hate-crimes law.

Between the fast-moving legislative process and our own pressures to publish a newspaper, the details of the debate over that legislation were inadvertently misrepresented in our Monday editorial lamenting that the Utah Legislature — yet again — failed to pass such a bill.

We urged a compromise between two competing bills. As it turns out, the competing sponsors, Sen. James Evans, R-Salt Lake, and Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake, had indeed hammered out a compromise measure, and Evans had asked that his bill be held. But now the compromise bill is dead, barring some unforeseen circumstance.

The Deseret Morning News has long supported hate-crimes legislation. This year, we had occasion to meet with Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard, a young man who was singled out because he was gay, savagely attacked and left for dead outside Laramie, Wyo. He later died at a hospital.

His attack illustrates that seething hatred exists toward people identified as belonging to certain groups, and that certain people will act on that hate. Utah prosecutors need the appropriate tools to deal with individuals who commit hate crimes.

The best we can do is hope that next year, when an election is not in play, lawmakers will see this issue for what it is — a statement by Utah at large that hate is unwelcome here and that an appropriate penalty can be leveled against people who commit offenses in the name of bias.