Pedophiles or veterans??

so i have just ben informed that if you do anything to a pedophile than they can sue you for hate crime..but you can beat tha living crap out of a veteran and they can not do anything to you because of how they served in wars and what not.. welp from my personal opinion, i think this is really dumb because if your a parent and there was a pedophile walking around your children and you felt like they were "looking" at your children, you should be able to hit dem in tha face. but i guess its ok to hit veterans in tha face for no reason...