Hate crimes are undoubtedly evil, but it’s also evil to punish free thought for any reason.

As Noam Chomsky said, “If we don’t favor freedom of speech for those we loathe, we don’t favor it at all.”

Free speech advocates must oppose hate crime laws. These laws treat crimes like rape or murder differently if they were motivated by hateful opinions about certain groups, like homosexuals and racial minorities.

The recently passed Matthew Shepard Act expanded hate crime laws to add homosexuals to the list of protected groups. The act was named after a young man who was murdered because he was gay.

Supporters of additional hate crime laws note that Wyoming, the state where Shepard was murdered, did not have hate crime laws classifying gay people as a “protected group.”

But since the two murderers both received double-life sentences, we can reasonably say it was not the extent of the punishment people objected to. They wanted it to be prosecuted as hate crime rather than just murder.

Hate crime laws subject criminals motivated by hatred of certain groups to double prosecution. First, they are prosecuted for their act, and second, they are prosecuted for their thought.

Even if you believe that certain motives should be prosecuted more than others, there are many practical objections to hate crimes.

It is dubious to suggest courts can effectively determine whether hatred for a group was a motive and the discriminatory picking of certain minorities is also unfair.

If you are mugged because you are old or orphaned, you have none of the extra legal protection members of these chosen groups.

But the solution to these practical problems isn’t the enactment of more extensive hate crime laws but to abolish them altogether. These laws perpetuate the group mentality that creates violent hatred.

Those who are racist, sexist or homophobic see people not as individuals, but as members of a group.

Hate crimes are born of the same mentality, encouraging us to treat victims of hate-motivated crimes differently because of their gender, sexual orientation or race.

A society truly rejecting bigotry would not think of “ageism” when a young person mugs an old lady. They would be outraged because a murder was committed.

Advocates of hate crime laws are right to see intolerance as a problem in the United States.

But if they want to end it, they should lobby their leaders to support civil equality for oppressed groups by supporting causes like marriage equality.

As for our dream of a truly tolerant society, hate crime laws discriminating against both criminals and victims because of their opinion or “group” is a step in the wrong direction.