Why do hate crimes at home shock us so?

This sounds like something out of a movie from the 1950's. How awful.

BIG CREEK, W.Va. - Inside a shed on a remote hillside of this coalfield community, authorities say a young black woman was tortured for days, sexually assaulted, beaten and forced to eat rat droppings.

Her captors, all of them white, choked her with a cable cord, poured hot water over her and stabbed her in the leg while calling her a racial slur, according to criminal complaints. It wasn't until an anonymous tip led Logan County Sheriff's deputies to the property on Saturday that her ordeal ended and she was able to limp to safety, arms outstretched as she cried "help me!

Others in the article, including the mother of the 20-year-old victim, kept saying things to the likes of, "I can't believe people like this exist."

"I don't understand a human being doing another human being the way they did my daughter," Carmen Williams said Tuesday from her daughter's hospital room. "I didn't know there were people like that out here."

Which makes me wonder, are we naive to think that our fellow citizens aren't capable of such horrific acts? Has history taught us nothing? Is it awful and defeatist for us to presume that people will continue to perpetuate hate crimes and human rights violations? It happens routinely in many, many parts of the world, so why are we surprised? Certainly this is an inexcusable, terrible occurrence, but if similar things are happening everywhere else in the world, why are we shocked when it happens here? Is that ethnocentric of us, in the same vein as "It could never happen here" or "Not in my backyard" ?

Hate Crimes Legislation

In Detroit last week, 72-year-old Andrew Anthos was riding on a city bus and was asked by a fellow passenger if he was gay. The passenger then followed Mr. Anthos off the bus and attacked him with a metal pipe. Mr. Anthos died from his injuries Friday night and according to media reports, police are continuing the investigation without any solid leads.

Take action today to make sure that Congress passes comprehensive hate crimes legislation this session. Fill out the form below to tell your Representative to become an original cosponsor of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act that will soon be introduced in the House.

This legislation is a common sense, anti-bias crime measure which brings our nation's laws into the 21st century and is strongly supported by religious organizations, civil rights organizations and law enforcement officials. It is also widely supported by the American public.

You can go to the Human Rights Campaign Website to take action.

On a related note, I recently read this report at work and was so overcome with sadness I had to take a moment to compose myself. "50 Under 30: Masculinity and the War on America's Youth". Click on the big image on the bottom left of the screen to download the report. It details all the hate crime killings that have happened simply because of one's gender expression, and not even necessarily because of their sexual orientation.

From the report: Few of us realize just how many young people are dying violently each year simply because they don't fit someone's ideal for masculinity and femininity. Yet if federal law mandated the FBI to track genderbased hate crimes, they would outweigh every other category except race.

now you get taunted just for being male

SAN FRANCISCO - Members of an all-male singing group from Yale University say they were taunted with anti-gay slurs, attacked and beaten after singing "The Star Stangled Banner" at a New Year's Eve party in San Francisco.

So now they're gay just beccause they're in an all-male singing group? Jeez. Or they just targeted the ones that "looked" gay? And in SAN FRANCISCO, for crying out loud.

Police said they arrived and found about 20 people fighting in the street. They interviewed some of the participants but let them go after taking their names.

WHAT!? No one was arrested? Taken in for questioning for a HATE CRIME? What the hell?