This year I am sponsoring House Bill 50, Criminal Penalty Amendment, better known as hate-crimes legislation. It is my fifth year as a sponsor of this legislation. I will not rest until we take the necessary action of passing an effective and enforceable penalty enhancement for crimes motivated solely by hate.

From a very early age, being raised Jewish, I always knew I was different from my friends. In elementary school, when friends went home or played after school, I attended Hebrew School to study Jewish traditions and customs. Consequently, I stood out from others.

Rarely was being Jewish divisive. Sure, I was teased, and other kids poked fun at what they thought was strange. Some jokes were more harmful than others, but rarely were they mean-spirited. My Bar Mitzvah, coming-of-age ceremony, was attended by Jewish and non-Jewish friends alike. Still, being raised Jewish was a unique experience that brought different lessons.

Early on, my parents spoke to my sisters and me about the Holocaust - what it was, how it changed what it meant to be Jewish and what it meant to be hated. They could never adequately explain the last part.

That lesson was, unfortunately, taught to us by experience.

I remember the first lesson like it was yesterday. I was in seventh grade and it was one of those days that I was to attend Hebrew School at the synagogue, but I begged my parents to let me skip this one time and go to soccer practice instead. They did! What I did not know was that one of those life lessons was waiting around the corner.

I will never forget the look on my parents' and my sisters' faces as I walked through the door that evening. They were huddled around the kitchen table. Immediately, I could tell that something was wrong.

Our synagogue, Temple Israel, had been desecrated. Spray-painted all over the building were harsh words like "Dirty Kikes, go home!" "Dirty Jews!" and swastikas. My parents tried to explain why this happened, but I could see their struggle.

How do you explain to your 11-, 13- and 15-year-old children what hate is - that people who don't even know you, except for one thing, wish you harm. There are no words. They struggled, as I know I will struggle when the time comes that I must try and explain this to my son.

This incident left a huge impression on my life, as did my parents' openness in discussing the struggles of prejudice and discrimination as it related to us and others - mostly others. It made me thirst for an understanding. It became a focus of my academic and personal studies. It was the reason for the books I read, my research, and, for many years, my professional career.

From all the books that I have read and continue to read, all the wise words I have heard others speak, and from all the tears I have seen shed, what I have learned to understand the most is the human toll and the human cost of hatred, in particular being a target of that hate.

Five years ago, this "journey" of mine took an unexpected turn when I was given the honor to serve as a state representative and was further blessed when Sen. Pete Suazo let me work closely with him in his endeavors to pass effective hate-crimes legislation.

To say the least, it has been a challenge. I am not referring merely to the challenge of passing this legislation, however, because it has tested me in other, more unexpected ways.

Philosophically, I do not always agree with a "tough on crime" approach. So how do I justify a penalty enhancement for crimes motivated by bias and prejudice? Part of the answer lies in the wider impact that these crimes have beyond the individual victim.

Another personal struggle has been my strong commitment to defending people's freedom to speak, think and believe as they wish - including the right to hate.

One of my heroes has always been the Jewish attorney who defended the rights of the American Nazi Party to march through Skokie, Ill., in 1972. He fully understood that the Nazi Party chose this city because of the many Holocaust survivors, yet he stood firm in defending the rights of all people. I will always try to live up to the example he set. Again, how do I justify the apparent contradiction?

Be assured that I do feel strongly that many of my questions are answered in the policy arguments: that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld hate-crime statutes as constitutional, not a violation of free speech; that hate crimes are of a more violent nature; and other considerations. More compelling, however, for me are the answers that lie in the human impact of hate crimes.

My experience in seventh grade remains fresh in my memory. I encounter the costs of hate on a regular basis. I am at a loss for words when I see the pain, fear and anger of a young African-American mother after she discovers hate literature on her doorstep. Her whole neighborhood was targeted, but only at her house was it put on the doorstep. Can you imagine the fear?

What do I say to a refugee family from Sudan who came here to escape persecution, even death, when numerous times in the past year their property has been vandalized with deplorable racial slurs? How does the mother respond to her son when he says, "This isn't supposed to happen in America"?

How do I explain in terms that you can understand about my fear when I discover a member of a hate group standing in my front lawn with a rock in her hand?

I did not have the chance to get to know Pete Suazo well enough before his death to fully understand what motivated him year after year. My guess is that it was not much different from what motivates me to continue.

Pete taught me a very important lesson about perseverance in the face of opposition: Do it politely and in a way that builds respect and understanding. My hope is that you better understand why I continue, and will continue, to raise this issue.

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Rep. David Litvack represents District 26 in Salt Lake City. He is a volunteer and advocacy coordinator at the Salt Lake Rape Recovery Center.

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