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Originally Posted by dippin
There is a reason why hate crime legislation was upheld unanimously. As the unanimous decision in that case stated. "this conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm.... bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest."
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Where, WHERE, WHERE ON EARTH is there ANY quantitative support for that statement? It is SO MUCH BS it is ridiculous. Was the Rodney King beating a hate crime? Hell, it wasn't even a crime at first. It caused a bit of social unrest. For every one of those results, there can be found hundreds of contradictory examples.
This is nothing but a bit of specious rhetoric that appeals to people who want to assuage their conscience over a crime against a member of an abused subset of society. It has no basis in fact.
The hate is in the promotion of prejudice, in the speech that incites the action. We should not be having second-class victims, and that is what current hate crime laws promote.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Anyway, the answer to your question is that they aren't equal crimes. A crime against someone based on sexual orientation is deemed worse than a crime against someone based on their affiliation with a subculture. Though I'd like to think that perhaps if such a crime were committed that the accused would be charged for a hate crime under the aforementioned categories.
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Deemed worse by whom? Certainly not by those of us who think people are equal and should be treated so.