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There are two kinds of factors that affect the severity of the crime in homocides, mitigating factors, and aggravating factors.
Hate crimes legislation is, to me, similar to drunk driving laws. Before drunk driving was added as a crime in itself, and as an aggravating factor in vehicular crimes, drunkenness was often invoked as a mitigating factor when a drunk driver got into an accident.
Being drunk is, for the most part, perfectly legal, but that becomes an important factor in determining degree of culpablilty when a vehicular crime occurs, even though it, in iteself, is not a crime.
I see hate crimes legislation in a similar vein. Hating gays isn't illegal, nor do I think it should be, and hate crimes legislation won't make it so. What it will do is take that into account as an aggravating factor when it leads to a crime.
Nobody is punishing anyone for what they're thinking here, the suggestion is that certain motivations for a crime should lead to a more severe penalty for that crime. So long as the bigots don't hurt others, they're perfectly safe.
Abuse of the system is of course abominable, precisely because it makes it more difficult for legitimate cases to get the hearing they deserve. False accusations of racism or homophobia or sexism are abhorant. This does not mean we shouldn't take the accurate accusations seriously, just that we must be careful to discriminate between the two.
Gilda
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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.
~Steven Colbert
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