One fig leaf they clung to was the idea that if they imposed tougher sentences on criminals who pick their victims in order to terrorize people of certain sexual orientations, that would somehow put the state on the side of gay rights, even same-sex marriage.

Another flimsy excuse was the desire to make a law different from the nationally accepted, and court-approved, practice of making a list of the sorts of motivations that constitute a hate crime - targeting victims due to their race, religion, gender, ancestry or sexual orientation. They argued that such a list was too exclusionary and wanted something much broader, such as the law that was on the books in Georgia.

Neither argument was ever very good and, in the last two weeks, both have been firmly swept aside. Now reasonable legislators have no excuse but to approve the hate crimes bill proposed by state Rep. David Litvack and endorsed Wednesday by the Utah Sentencing Commission.

The most obvious change in the political landscape is Tuesday's approval of Amendment 3. Enshrining in the Utah Constitution a prohibition not only of same-sex marriage but also of any other approximation of marriage should make it clear that disapproval of same-sex marriage is not the same as a willingness to avert one's eyes when people get beat up or killed just because they are gay.

The other excuse, the one about how a hate crimes law should not leave anybody out, crashed and burned last week at the hands of the Georgia Supreme Court. By a 7-0 vote, that state's top tribunal tossed out that state's hate crimes law as “unconstitutionally vague.”

That's lawyer-speak for a law so fuzzy you can't be expected to know when you are breaking it. In this case, the extra disapproval of crimes motivated by “bias or prejudice” was rejected because its vague language could apply to someone who assaulted someone because he was offended by someone else's Boston Red Sox cap or their “Bush for president” lawn sign.

The legal and moral justification for hate crimes laws is that an attack on one person due to race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, whether the victim is in the minority or the majority, amounts to a terroristic threat against everyone else in the same category. Just as it is a more serious crime to kill 10 people than it is to kill one, it is a much more serious crime to menace millions of people than it is to attack one or two.

Forty-seven - when Georgia cleans up its act it will be 48 - states and the federal judiciary understand that. It is time the Utah Legislature did, too.