ReligiousTolerance.org has a Web page of hate-crime definitions and existing laws and another on hate-crime laws and sexual orientation. It also has a page dedicated to the question of whether hate-crimes legislation limits free speech.

Partners Against Hate maintains a state-by-state database of hate-crime statistics and hate-crime laws.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a state-by-state map of identified hate groups. The center says that in 2012 there were 1,007 hate groups operating throughout the United States, an increase of more than 50 percent since 2000.

An April 8, 2009, story in The Washington Post, “Some Link Economy With Spate Of Killings,” examines links between the recession and 57 killings in eight mass-murder crimes over the course of a single month last spring.

Several high-profile hate crimes have made headlines in 2009, confirming fears for some that bias attacks are on the rise. They include the April killing of three Pittsburgh policemen by a right-wing extremist and the shooting in June at the Holocaust Museum in Washington by an elderly white supremacist that left a security guard dead.

Read an April 3, 2005, Washington Post article about a variety of efforts and programs to include people with disabilities in congregational life.

In April 2009, the Department of Homeland Security released a report detailing concerns about a rise in right-wing extremism. In The New York Times columnist Charles Blow parses the figures and uses a graphic to illustrate the dependence of right-wing hate groups on recruits with military training.

Listen to an Aug. 2, 2007, Speaking of Faith program about the L’Arche community for the developmentally disabled.

Virginia Trimble is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. She specializes in the history of science, including the history of human understanding of the evolution of galaxies.