“You can be charged with a hate crime if you make a statement or take an action that inflicts injury or incites a breach of the peace based on a person’s race, creed, gender or perceived sexual orientation.”

- First Assistant McHenry County State’s Attorney Thomas Carroll (Daily Herald)

Two 16-year-old girls have been charged with committing a hate crime after they printed and distributed fliers with a photo of two boys kissing (one of whom was a student at their school) and the statement, “God hates fags.”

Lifesite.net calls it a “nasty prank.” At FreeRepublic.com, rightwingers are ranting about free speech. But somewhere in Illinois, a gay teenager is dealing with the fact that inflammatory fliers featuring an intimate picture of himself are circulating his high school.

The target wasn’t homosexuality itself - this was about one SPECIFIC student (who the girls had been feuding with) and using his sexual orientation to bring as much harm to him as possible. Is there anyone naive enough to think that this little stunt hasn’t comprimised his safety at school?

To many, this is all about free speech and its imminent end. But if this had occured based on the race of a student, would anyone be defending the girls?

And what sort of penalties are the girls facing? (CBS2)

Tom Carroll, first assistant state’s attorney for McHenry County, said penalties for the girls could range from probation to a 30-day sentence in the Kane County Juvenile Detention Facility. If they were convicted, Carroll said, the girls’ records would be cleared at age 18 but those records would remain available to law-enforcement agencies.