History Informs Debate On Hate Crimes Legislation

To the editors:

Re "Hate Crime Too Broad" (Dissent, Oct. 14): First, many people (including myself) actually have friends and family members who are gay; so this is an issue we all have some interest in. Second, there actually are some people out there who hate other people just because they are gay, so despite the assertions of Marc J. Ambinder '01, some of our friends and family are at risk.

According to some classes I have taken, we have a rich historical tradition of creating special categories for people who are different from the majority of other people and subjecting them to different standards of justice, including the protection (or non-recognition) of their civil rights. But because their numbers are small enough to ignore within a popular democracy, their voices, struggles and needs are sometimes overlooked.

Fortunately, many wise and courageous people have forced the popularly elected government to enact and enforce special laws to protect these people from the aggression and hatred of other people. Even though they were small in number, I do not think those who forced the passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s could possibly be considered "elitist." Finally, sometimes local juries do not enforce the same standards of justice for all people equally (I have heard of this happening before as well), so sometimes the federal government needs to get involved. MICHAEL V. WILCOX   Oct. 14, 1998 The writer is a resident tutor in Currier House.