If you are white, heterosexual, not religious, don't work for the emergency services and are not disabled, you've just become a minority group in Scotland. In the eyes of the Scottish Parliament, if you belong to the above grouping and you are the victim of an assault - verbal or physical - the courts don't have to treat your attacker as harshly as they would otherwise.

If you are white, heterosexual, not religious, don't work for the emergency services and are not disabled, you've just become a minority group in Scotland. In the eyes of the Scottish Parliament, if you belong to the above grouping and you are the victim of an assault - verbal or physical - the courts don't have to treat your attacker as harshly as they would otherwise.

That is the outcome of the latest piece of law-making by MSPs who have just extended existing hate crime laws on race and religion to cover disabled people and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. The threat of heavier sentences for anyone assaulting a police officer has existed for many years and, more recently, the fire and rescue services and frontline medical workers were added to the list.

Attacks on any of these groups can now be categorised as "aggravated" offences and the courts are expected to take that into account when sentencing offenders.

It is abhorrent that members of the gay community have been assaulted or killed because of who they are, and it is barely credible that disabled people would be victims of assault.

People from ethnic groups know all too well what it is liked to be victimised; football supporters have been murdered for wearing club colours associating them with a religious background - even though they may not have seen the inside of a church in decades.

And who can understand the mentality of morons who attack fire officers - often when they're putting their own lives on the line - or frontline nurses and ambulance workers, who are assaulted regularly by the very people they are trying to help?

The extremists and idiots who perpetrate these crimes are an affront to Scotland and they deserve to be treated harshly by the courts. But does a victim who doesn't belong to any of these groups feel less pain when they are beaten up, stabbed or slashed?

Is the attack any less vicious if the motive behind it was, for example, theft? There may be no "hate" involved when an attacker randomly selects a victim in a street assault, with the intent of making a profit because their target looks like they have something worth stealing, but why should there be a lesser tariff for the assailant because of that?

The man behind this latest addition to the statute books is Patrick Harvie, the Green MSP for Glasgow and gay rights campaigner. He is one of the most eloquent speakers at Holyrood and presented an argument persuasive enough to allow him to claim that parliament had spoken "with one voice".

True enough, but there was a curious silence from the Conservative benches, where Glasgow MSP Bill Aitken, the Tory party's justice spokesman and Holyrood's justice committee convener, is on record as saying: "No group is entitled to any less protection and that means no group should be entitled to any extra."

In the swell of consensus politics that helped Mr Harvie get his Bill on to the statute books, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said no-one should have a crime committed against them simply on the basis of disability or sexual orientation. He's nearly right - he should have stopped after saying no-one should have a crime committed against them. That is what justice and retribution through the court system is supposed to be about.

If a victim has a mental or physical disability, it is ridiculous to think a judge would not take that into account when sentencing the attacker, just as they would any other factor when considering appropriate punishment - or do MSPs really have so little faith in the justiciary and, if so, why?

As for their claims that the new legislation will reduce homophobia and other forms of discrimination, the only sensible reaction can be scepticism. The Scottish Government has made several moves in recent years to try to give victims of crime more support and redress, but that principle should surely apply to all victims and their families.

Instead of picking out selected groups, MSPs should insist on consistency of sentencing. Only then will they show they understand the concept that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.