Defacing a statue is hardly a hate crime

I was appalled by The Sun’s editorial “Message against hate” (Aug. 12), which incredibly drew a moral equivalency as a “hate crime” between the brutal and racially motivated assault on a white waitress in downtown Annapolis and the vandalizing of a statue to a black politician.

Although the desecration of any public monument should be and is condemned by most fair-minded Americans, does The Sun really believe that the savage unprovoked physical attack on a human being should elicit the same response as the vandalizing of an inanimate object?

If so, I wonder why The Sun did not similarly condemn as a hate crime the spray painting of the statue to Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Stonewall Jackson in Wyman Park.

G. Elliott Cummings

Baltimore