10/18/98
Maine's home-grown bias industry has entered the final quarter
of 1998 in great shape to rack up another annual production
record. But it's a state-subsidized industry that Maine people
will surely decide they can live without when they understand the
extent to which it has polluted the social and political
landscape.
Aided and abetted by the state's media establishment, the
hate-crimes factory in Augusta continues to manufacture the
fiction that Maine is in the throes of an epidemic of violence
and threats against members of minority groups, homosexuals in
particular. Reporters and news editors have fallen into the bad
habit of transmitting this propaganda without any of the
journalistic skepticism and scrutiny that normally greets the
pronouncements of state officials.
On more than one occasion in the past few weeks, Attorney General
Andrew Ketterer's bogus claim that "225 to 250 hate crimes
occur each year in Maine" has been reported by Maine media
outlets as if the journalists involved were auditioning for the
role of Moses delivering the stone tablets from Mt. Sinai.
Ketterer's delusional declaration is so patently absurd that
Assistant Attorney General Steve Wessler, chief of the
hate-crimes unit and the prosecutor most adept at manufacturing
inflated statistics, cannot offer even a scrap of credible
evidence to validate such a charge. But don't hold your breath
waiting for Wessler to correct the public record -- his office
thrives on mindless repetition of the Big Lie that Maine is a
hateful, violent place where members of minority groups are
routinely beaten and abused by ubiquitous bigots.
According to Maine State Police crime statistics, there are
consistently less than a hundred hate-crimes complaints filed
annually with law enforcement authorities. In 1994 there were 55,
in 1995 there were 76, and in 1996 there were 61. Wessler's
office pumps up the numbers into the hundreds by adding into the
hate-crimes complaint statistics so-called "bias
incidents," which are defined as acts of hate that are not
crimes. This includes anonymous reports of name-calling,
graffiti, and even published letters-to-the-editor deemed
"hateful" by gay activists.
Wessler is a politicized prosecutor who says it's an
"abomination" that Maine's Human Rights Act does not
include sexual orientation as a protected minority
classification. What better way for the Gay Left to seize victim
status and all its perks than to exaggerate the incidence of hate
crimes against gays, while simultaneously smearing opponents of
civil-rights fraud as hate-mongers and bigots?
Gay activists and their allies in the Blaine House, the AG's
office, and the news media are still smarting from the sting of
last winter's referendum rejection of a sexual orientation
amendment to the Maine Human Rights Act. Their announced strategy
is to put the measure on a statewide ballot two years from now,
when the Presidential election will presumably draw much larger
numbers of voters to the polls than voted in the special election
last February. In the meantime, expect a steady stream of press
releases from Wessler's office hyping every incident of juvenile
delinquency, real or imagined, into an argument for a gay-rights
statute.
The truth is that bias-motivated crimes against homosexuals in
Maine are so extremely rare that Wessler has resorted to
soliciting anonymous complaints about allegedly anti-gay graffiti
in order to pump up the numbers. Even after Wessler's strenuous
exertions, his bogus hate-crimes statistics amount to a tiny,
microscopic fraction of the total crime picture in Maine.
In any case, Wessler does not need proof that a crime was
committed in order to win a judgment against an accused person
under the hate-crimes law. The standard of proof is so low that
it's almost non-existent. Wessler's office batted 20 for 20 in
court in 1996; he could probably get a hate-crimes injunction
against a tuna sandwich if he wanted to. And he doesn't even
maintain records to show whether or not the defendants he has
prosecuted civilly were ultimately convicted of any crimes.
Maine newspapers give the bias industry's output far more
attention and prominence than it deserves. Consider this gross
disparity: last year there were over 4,000 domestic assault
complaints filed in Maine, compared to several dozen hate-crimes
cases annually. If spouse-battering incidents received the same
level and intensity of coverage that hate crimes get, most of the
space in your daily newspaper would be devoted every day to
stories of domestic violence.
State government's priorities are every bit as twisted as the
news media's.
It was reported earlier this year that Maine law enforcement
authorities have failed to investigate thousands of cases of
alleged sexual abuse of minors. Meanwhile, Wessler's hate-crimes
unit has expended scarce state resources investigating graffiti
on a high school locker in Saco. Wessler's office was also bogged
down in the investigation of what turned out to be a staged hate
crime at Colby College. The lesbian student who actually wrote
the viciously anti-gay threatening messages and filed a false
report with authorities was allowed to leave the school without
facing any disciplinary or judicial consequences.
The point is that we have a taxpayer-funded propaganda machine in
Augusta ("enabled" by the media) working overtime to
portray Maine as a loathsome hate state where gays and lesbians
are a downtrodden, oppressed minority group routinely subjected
to hateful, even criminal abuse. It's a maliciously false picture
that bears no resemblance to reality.
Here's the question that must be answered soon in newsrooms
across Maine: will there be honest public discourse and reporting
of the debate about making "sexual orientation" a
protected minority classification in Maine law, or will we be
subjected for the next two years or more to a state-sponsored,
media-hyped disinformation campaign depicting Maine as a bigoted
backwater?
Lawrence Lockman of Seboeis Plantation is chairman of Concerned Maine Families PAC. His email address is ldlockman@telplus.net |