Unintended consequences

Another case of a person faking the hate crime she claimed to have been a victim of.

Actually another hoax:

The rash of gay-bashing incidents at Tamalpais High School, dating to November, was the work of a student who claimed she was the victim of hate crimes, said police Capt. James Wickham. The teen, who was not identified by police, admitted that she was the perpetrator of the incidents, which included defacing her own car, authorities said.

But now I wonder, based on how many of anti-homosexual hate crimes turn out to be hoaxes, if the high rate of these incidents in the Bay Area is because there are a lot of homosexuals prepared to claim that they were victims of such crimes.

To the extent that such acts are intended to "raise consciousness" about gay bashing, it's having the opposite effect. The more this happens, the more any real victim of a real hate crime will have to prove it's not a hoax.

This kind of thing pollutes the field for the group it's intended to benefit.

This isn't the only sort of thing that suffers from the dilution of sympathy that attends to the "boy who cried wolf" effect.

More in another post.