Here are the basic facts: On October 16th, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the Latter Day Saints church in Mukilteo. The fire it started destroyed the building, which is valued at more than a million dollars.
Before I go farther, I want to call your attention to the question mark in my title. I don't know whether this was a hate crime. What I do know are two things. First, there are many people who hate the LDS church. You could see that hate in, for example, the fight over California's Proposition 8.
Second, if the target of this arson had been a politically correct religious organization, our "mainstream" journalists (and many of our elected officials) would have been certain the arson was a hate crime, and would be calling for a massive investigation. They would be lecturing us on the importance of tolerance, and they might even be offering to add their own money to the modest reward now being offered.
But that isn't what has happened. In fact the coverage has been minimal, and I have seen no reaction at all from our elected officials. A search on "arson + Mukilteo" with Google News found just four stories; a similar search with Bing News found five stories — none of them about this particular act of arson. (The Bing team needs to do some work on their news searches, in my humble opinion.)
What I conclude from that lack of coverage is that this hate crime — assuming it was a hate crime — is an unimportant hate crime, at least for our local journalists, and for most of our local officials.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(Those not from this area may want to know where Mukilteo is. As you can see, a Seattle reporter would not have to go far to cover this story.
For the record: I have what I think is a common pair of attitudes toward Mormons; I don't care for their theology (for reasons that are inappropriate to discuss here), but I have found most of them to be good people, and fine citizens.
Also for the record: In general I don't care for "hate crimes", because I think they too often become thought crimes. But if we have them on the books, and we do in many places, we should enforce them evenly.)
Posted by Jim Miller at December 12, 2010 04:07 PM | Email ThisYes, there are those who would like to see the church use things like this to our political advantage, but I am not one of them.
Posted by: Jonathan Gardner on December 12, 2010 04:33 PMYes, there are those who would like to see the church use things like this to our political advantage, but I am not one of them.
Posted by: Jonathan Gardner on December 12, 2010 04:33 PMHeck, when right-winger like yourself admit to "not caring for their theology", and right-wing religious presidential candidates suggest that Mormons are devil-worshippers, I'd be more inclined to think that a crazy fundamentalist Christian was responsible.
Posted by: demo kid on December 12, 2010 05:02 PMSo, what more would you ask the press to report? Have there been investigation results that went unreported? Maybe an arrest or prosecution? If those things happened and went unreported, I'd say you might have a point. As it stands, the point of your complaint eludes me.
Posted by: scottd on December 12, 2010 05:04 PMHow would KING 5 News have covered the fire bombing of, say, a homosexual bathhouse?
Might they have led with the story and performed nightly follow-ups until the perp was captured?
Liberal scum cover the news they want to cover. If you are not one of their official victim groups, don't look for much in the way of high profile or sustained coverage.
I suspect the perp who threw a fire bomb at the LDS church was likely a left winger, one of those peaceful people like the ones who trashed seattle during the WTO.
Posted by: Attila on December 12, 2010 05:40 PMIs demo kid that kid from NPI in Redmond?
Posted by: Monterey on December 12, 2010 06:26 PMHypocrite.
Posted by: Hinton on December 12, 2010 06:34 PMOpen two tabs in Google News. In one, use my search phrase, "arson + Mukilteo". In the other, use "arson + Corvallis". Compare the results.
For the record, one more time: I do not know, as I said, whether the Mukilteo attack was a hate crime. Nor do I, or anyone other than the perpetrator, know whether the Corvallis attack was a hate crime. (But that didn't stop some from making accusations.)
I think both cases deserve vigorous investigations, and I would support efforts in both cases to raise money for rewards offered for information.
Posted by: Jim Miller on December 12, 2010 06:53 PMI disagree with this. We should act in the appropriate manner, regardless of how others might react in similar cases.
At this point we don't know what the motive was. We may never know what the motive was.
There has been vandalism of Mormon churches in the Seattle area since Prop 8 (and linked to that issue), but we don't know that there is a link in this case. As one local person pointed out, the Mormon church was right next door to the local high school. Perhaps some drunk high school kids thought "Lets go burn down the school" and between the darkness and their drunkenness they mistakenly burned down the wrong building.
The truth is we don't know, and we don't need to be complaining about the media when the media has done nothing wrong in this case.
Posted by: Cicero on December 12, 2010 07:08 PMHave you noticed that Islam has been in the news a little bit during the past decade? Or that the Corvallis mosque was tied to someone who tried to commit a major act of terrorism that has received international coverage?
By contrast, the Mormon church hasn't been in a lot of controversy -- neither the Mormons in general or the Mukilteo church in particular.
Are you saying the media should cover the Corvallis story less? Or the Mukilteo story more (what would you have them say)? Or do you think the police should be doing something different?
Posted by: Bruce on December 12, 2010 10:15 PMThe Mukilteo arson was on October 15, 2010. The Corvallis arson was on November 28, 2010.
Therefore, it is not surprising that there are far more stories on Google News about the more recent Corvallis arson.
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 12, 2010 10:38 PMWhat I *have* seen on the news for the last few years are newsmen bending over backwards to withhold a suspect's religion (typically Islam) and his name (typically some iteration of Muhammad). On the other hand, they salivate at the chance to say that a suspect was a Christian.
Liberals attack Mormons because they know Mormons will just turn around and pray for em. But they protect Muslim criminals because they're afraid Muslims will hunt em down if they acknowledge the fact that the suspect's from The Religion of Peace(TM).
Posted by: Matt M. on December 12, 2010 11:54 PMIn view of this I can understand why our media is more concerned about arson directed at mosques.
As for LDS folks, I've found them to be remarkably similar to the general run of mankind, if a bit less likely to drink alcohol. Their theology doesn't mesh exactly with mine, but that's fine by me.
Posted by: jvon on December 13, 2010 02:02 AMThis is different from the varying degrees of murder, for example: the point of those is not WHAT your motive is, but WHETHER you intended to commit the crime, and when you intended it in relation to when you committed it, and so on.
Intent and motive are not the same thing. We criminalize intent, but only extremely rarely do we criticize motive. Treason is one of the very few examples.
And many hate crime laws are blatantly unconstitutional as they don't require a Constitutional burden of proof of anything other than the fact of "hate," which makes it either a due process violation or a free speech violation.
SOME hate crime laws require the hate to be proven as a motive in the crime, but many others do not, and this makes them unconstitutional, because even if we accept that motive can be criminalized in these cases, due process still requires us to tie it, with evidence, to the crime in question ... otherwise it's the motive itself **separate from** the crime that is criminalized, which is a clear and unambiguous violation of the First Amendment.
Also, Richard Pope is incorrect about Google News' time range. I think it defaults to the last month, but the date range is selectable.
Good grief. Are you deliberately stupid?
The point he's making are the very real threats and actions taken against Mormons two years ago for their support on Prop. 8. You know, because it's happened before?
Here. If you'd bother to actually click through on the link, you would've read this.
At an LDS church in Orangevale (in Sacramento County), vandals spray-painted in red letters on the front sign and sidewalk: "No on 8" and "No on Prop 8".[123] An affiliate group of the Radical Trans/Queer organization Bash Back! claims to have poured glue into the locks of an LDS church and spray painted its walls.[124]
Seriously. Pull your freakin' head out.
Posted by: jimg on December 13, 2010 10:47 AMhttp://michellemalkin.com/2010/12/13/fk-the-rich-class-war-arsonist-on-the-loose/
Posted by: Mike336 on December 13, 2010 02:20 PMObviously the arsonist is a gay angered by Elder Packer's talk. He may well be a gay ex-Mormon. An "ExMoHo" to use their own term for themselves.
Posted by: Murdock on December 14, 2010 02:47 PMNo, a thought crime does not require any action by the "criminal":
In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, a thoughtcrime is an illegal type of thought.
These laws literally say that some motives are worse than others.
Which is a basic principle of justice. A poor laborer, who steals food to feed his child, is considered less guilty than a rich banker, who swindled the poor laborer to help buy a larger yacht.
We criminalize intent, but only extremely rarely do we criticize motive. Treason is one of the very few examples.
It's good to see you showing your usual firm grasp of our Constitutional law. Treason is defined entirely by act: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. The motive (hatred, cash, ideology) does not matter in the least.
Posted by: tensor on December 14, 2010 08:04 PMYou are right that if you hate without committing the arson, there is no penalty for the hate. But then, there had to be some speech or action in Orwell's novel before a thought crime could be prosecuted.
I also see the idea of a hate-crime as Orwellian.
Arson should be illegal, no matter what the motivation, and asking a jury to get inside an arsonist's mind is really a silly and Orwellian practice.
I'm against hate, especially against jews, gays, lesbians, racial minorities, women, etc, but the way to reduce such hate is through civil, not governmental means.
All hate-crime laws should be abolished.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on December 18, 2010 09:50 PM