Why I am against hate-crime laws

The very idea of hate-crime laws is misguided. The laws themselves establish a special class of victims whose injuries are given special weight. Hate-crime laws imply, correspondingly, that victims who do not belong to a designated group are less worthy of protection and it punishes criminals for what they think in addition to what they do. Prosecuting all crimes does not require us to abandon the idea that all men are created equal in favor of the idea that men who use a wheelchair, or are of a different color, sex, or religion are more equal than others.