Hate Crimes in Alabama?

Matthew Hall (he of the famous "man kills deer with bare hands" story of a while back) points out the relatively little attention the media have given to the Baptist church burnings in Alabama in recent weeks. Hall notes an exception: Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby.

Jacoby asks what would be the reaction nationally if ten gay bookstores had been firebombed in San Francisco or if ten mosques were burned down in Detroit. Jacoby asserts that legislation would be introduced in Congress immediately to address the new round of "hate crimes" and a nationwide hunt would ensue for the terrorists who committed the atrocities. Jacoby polls anti-hate crime groups around the nation, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, and none of them seem willing to identify the burning of ten rural Alabama Baptist churches to be an act of hate.

Jacoby suggests the problem isn't that rural Baptists need "hate crimes" protection, but rather that the entire enterprise seems inconsistent and politically-charged. Jacoby concludes:

But real progress will come only when we abandon the whole misguided notion of "hate crimes," which deems certain crimes more deserving of outrage and punishment not because of what the criminal did, but because of the group to which the victim belonged. The burning of a church is a hateful act regardless of the congregants' skin color. That some people bend over backward not to say so is a disgrace.