Posted on 12/11/2002 6:09:39 AM PST by Theodore R.
Supremacist group might revive hate-crime debate
By Lara Azar Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE – News reports that a white supremacist group has moved its headquarters to Riverton could revive the ongoing hate-crimes debate among legislators next year.
Several bills have been brought forward in the past few years, with none making it very far through the approval process. Wyoming remains one of a handful of states with little hate-crime legislation on the books.
Many legislators see it the way Rep. Rodney “Pete” Anderson, R-Pine Bluffs, does: A crime is a crime is a crime.
“It’s still a crime whether it’s racially motivated or sexually motivated or dollar-motivated – it doesn’t matter,” Anderson said.
But Sen. Jayne Mockler, D-Cheyenne, wants to see legislators rethink some of those attitudes in the face of the announcement from World Church of the Creator.
It was reported over the weekend that the church has moved its headquarters from Illinois to Riverton and named a former state employee as its leader for Wyoming and its world leader of operations.
While the group claims not to condone illegal activity, one former member that went on a shooting spree targeting minorities three years ago was deemed a “martyr” upon killing himself. Others have been convicted of assaults and armed robberies.
“It probably ought to make (lawmakers) think about it,” Mockler said of hate-crime legislation.
But Anderson said the move doesn’t change his mind about hate-crime legislation.
“It wouldn’t influence me whatsoever,” he said. “I think a crime is a crime and needs to be punished.”
Mockler sponsored a bill last year that would have increased penalties for hate-based crimes. She said it basically accounted for which is worse: egging a neighbor’s house or spray-painting a swastika on a synagogue.
The bill did not get the two-thirds vote it needed for introduction.
Mockler said Wyoming is among the least-integrated states in the nation, and that can be a draw to groups like the World Church of the Creator, whose members believe they can make their message heard here.
Group leader the Rev. Matt Hale said Wyoming could expect leaflets, literature, demonstrations and recruiting.
Passing hate-crime legislation, meanwhile, could act as a deterrent, Mockler said. But she acknowledges that it will be a hard sell to fellow legislators.
“Wyoming has a tendency not to be proactive about anything; we’re very reactive,” she said. “It’ll still be a very hard case to make, that we should do something proactively to say to Wyoming that this isn’t who Wyoming is.
“That’s unfortunate, because followers will come here, and that’ll make things worse for people on the reservation.”
Riverton is on the Wind River Indian Reservation, home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes.
The World Church of the Creator Web site refers to American Indians as an “inferior human subspecies.”
It also repeatedly derides “Jews and the mud races” and their efforts to bring about the downfall of white people, whom it calls “the creators of all worthwhile culture and civilization.”
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