Quote:
Originally posted by Lebell
And I'll repeat: The "hate crime" designation is an attempt to punish 'thought', which I cannot approve of.
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I agree. Punishing thought is deplorable at best. I repeat that hating is not against the law.
Murder is not the crime I would associate most frequently with "hate crime". No life can be measured by the motive of the taker. Adding punishment to these crimes shouldn't be possible because they need to have the maximum possible punishment, no matter why they were committed . There are crimes, however, whose
entire intent is the intimidation of certain minority groups. These are true "hate crimes". The intimidation here needs to be punished, not the hate. In many cases it is already is a crime to do these things, but the punishment needs to be stepped up if the
intent of the crime was to intimidate. Painting smiley faces on a bridge abuttment is not the same as painting a swastika on a person's front door.