Hate crimes law should be expanded
The H.L. Mencken Club? It sounds non-threatening.
Known in his time as the “sage of Baltimore,” Mencken was a satirist, journalist and critic who tackled subjects as diverse as music, literature and politics. He once said, “It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.”
But Mencken also described Jewish people as “the most unpleasant race ever heard of,” and said blacks were “low-caste” and were destined to “remain inert and inefficient until 50 generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be 50 generations ahead of him.”
It’s pronoucements of this variety that rouse the members of the H.L. Mencken Club, which has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has an active branch in Pennsylvania. It is joined by several organizations dedicated to vilifying and demonizing “the other.” The Ku Klux Klan continues to lumber on in the commonwealth, a full century after its ignominious revival, along with groups that go by names like the Traditionalist Workers Party, Blood and Honor and American Vanguard.
In fact, Pennsylvania is fifth in the nation for hate groups, behind California, Texas, Florida and New York. Even though the United States has made considerable progress over the last half-century, the march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this month and the violence that accompanied it is a timely reminder that racism, bigotry and hatred is not something that has been entirely overcome.
That’s why it’s important that Pennsylvania expand its hate crime law.
Bills have been introduced in both the state House and Senate that would offer protections to people based on, among other things, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. To its credit, Pennsylvania expanded its law in the early part of the last decade, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court voided the changes in 2008 on a technicality. Right now, the law only covers religion, race and country of origin.
Earlier this week at a news conference in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, state Rep. Dan Frankel, an Allegheny County Democrat, said the events in Charlottesville were “a comprehensive expression of hate,” and it’s incumbent on lawmakers to offer “a comprehensive reaction to it.”
Despite bipartisan support and backing from Gov. Tom Wolf, both bills have been languishing in committees since February. Many states, including conservative “red” redoubts like Nebraska, Kansas and Texas, have hate crime laws that at least cover sexual orientation. Pennsylvania should join them, and show that it is not a state that countenances hate and bigotry.
As Frankel said, “We need to express our concern and outrage in a way that’s constructive and makes something happen in our community and state that shows we’re tolerant, we’re accepting and we will reject acts of hate that we saw in Charlottesville.”