Obama expands hate crime law to include crimes against homosexuals
 

Obama Signs Hate Crimes Bill - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

Basically, the law has been expanded to include crimes targeted against people based on their sexual orientation. This is a bill that Bush helped block previously.

Canada passed something similar in 2004.

Do you think this is something that will pass quietly, or will there be implications and problems down the road? i.e., Will the anti-gay crowd have to change how they address gay issues?

It's a great victory for something that should be covered by the Equal Protection clause of the 14th. It's a shame they had to attach it to Afghanistan legislation in order to pass it.

Hate crimes are silly, but if the law is here to stay, this should be included.

I am of the mindset that ANY crime, is a hate crime if its done towards a person. (vs stealing or vandalism etc...., non personal crimes).

I cannot figure out what, in western society, is pushing the "HATE" part of the legislation. Rape is rape, murder is murder. Some will say that if its for a REASON, like race, sex, etc... then its a HATE crime. But arent all crimes for a reason?

The logic overwhelms me. Perhaps there is some other reason I am missing because pretty soon, EVERY reason will be legislated. Crime against a person that is 5LBs heavier than you? HATE crime. Crime against somebody shorter than you? HATE crime. Crime because the person wears opposite gender clothes every other Friday? HATE crime.

me too. i'm confused by the label. IMO it doesn't make it better or worse that it was done to a person of a particular color or sexual orientation.

Oh, look... a few middle class white people talking about hate crimes. Just dandy. Hardy-har-har.

I totally disagree with this legislation. A crime should never be worse based on the victims (or killer's) race, religion, sexuality, gender, political affiliation or whatever. The things that should matter is if the crime was pre meditated, an accident, a serial kill, or a moment of rage, but not color of skin, religion etc.

This is a giant step in the wrong direction.

That's what some say about gay marriage.

Nice gay marriage tangent, but we don't even know what you're referring to in the post above.

Fixed it for ya.

Hate crimes are about degrees of wrongdoing. Just as there are degrees to other laws.

It's one thing to murder someone because of a botched robbery, because of revenge for something, etc.; it's another thing to murder someone because "he was a fucking faggot."

This law protects specific groups because of specific crimes targeted against them. Doesn't it seem natural enough?

I still can't figure out what you are getting at :confused:

Hate crimes are crimes that are much more likely to be repeated.

It's not rocket science.

really? so a person with a rap sheet of theft and burglary of middle income homes isn't hating on the middle income families right? It's just not more likely to be repeated. :orly:

I think this is a great thing. While I agree that all crimes are hate crimes there is something particularly bad about crimes that are targeted upon them because of their gender, race, sexual orientation etc. These are cases where people hate someone because of who they are and not what they do or have done. It is about time this passed, i hope Matthew Shepard is smiling in heaven.

Why am I agreeing with this. I am sick of the mindset that people feel they need special treatment because of some social difference. Why can't cases just be dealt with on the individual level? Marry who your going to marry and kill who your going to kill, just be aware that the consequences will be the same regardless.

Exactly case by case and a jury trial we don't need new laws imo.

So do hate crimes impose harsher punishments?

Why would rational actors engage in burglary? Because either jobs are too scarce or jobs available are less efficient than burglary. It's an economic issue, not a "hate" issue. The situation can be rectified with stern punishment and providing an economic environment where burglary simply isn't the most efficient method of income. You can reduce recidivism for burglars (that don't suffer from kleptomania, which would need clinical treatment) significantly with the right economic conditions.

What can be done, economically, to make homosexuals less offensive to fundamentalist religious zealots? Nothing. The only way to deal with this is to make the punishment for the crime so great that it will dissuade the bigot from engaging in illegal activity motivated by their hatred.

It truly is simple.

Ok, if you don't understand something, like hate crimes legislation, at least read the wikipedia article. Disagreeing is one thing, but at least try to understand the other side's point of view.

I, for one, am generally in favor of hate crimes laws, for pretty much the reasons summarized in the wikipedia article. Hate *speech* laws are a much trickier matter. In the case of this legislation (as I understand it - I haven't done extensive research, I'm afraid), the effect is that crimes that are driven by hatred for a given race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, can be prosecuted on a federal level with harsher sentencing. This doesn't created 'protected classes' because the crime is the same whether a person is male or female, black or white, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight. The only requirement is that one of the aforementioned categories be part of the motivation for the crime.

First of all, I am always amazed at how little people know about things that they like to speak so strongly about. Hate crime legislation is not based on race, sexual orientation, etc. of the victim, but on the intent of the attacker. So this BS about "a crime shouldnt be worse because of the victim's race, etc" is simply misinformation. Even in the strictest hate crimes legislations the determinant is not simply race, gender, etc. but the intent. That is, hate crime is not a white man killing a black man. It is a white man killing a black man because of his race. And penalty enhancements based on intent are already present throughout our legislation for other crimes.

And it is not only restricted to murder. And it is not only restricted to minorities. As long as one of the categories included there are considered to be the motivation for the crime, the person can be charged with a hate crime.

Hate crime legislation exists because an assault charge where one person beats up another because he cheated on poker is a qualitatively different crime than one where one person beats another solely because of the color of his skin, or his religion, or so on, and as such needs to be treated differently under the law.


Besides that, there are two additional important points:
- one, that has already been made, which is the recidivism rate. We've already have all sorts of stipulations for crimes where the offender has a high likelihood to re offend, hate crimes legislation recognizes that fact as it relates to race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

- As much as people like to believe that we live in this abstract world where prejudice doesn't exist, the fact has been that our justice system is biased. In fact, prejudice has often been used as a defense, a mitigating factor in sentencing or in reducing the charge to a "heat of the moment" crime. The other day a man who killed a gay man was sentenced to 180 days in prison after using the "gay panic" defense.

So the whole point of the legislation is to address intent. We already do that when we discuss the different degrees of crime, the legislation merely adds something regarding prejudice.

That is the only reason I would see this being useful for. If you force some judge who thinks all gays are sinners and deserve to die to sentence a backwoods guy to XX number of years, I could see it being beneficial.

So what you're saying is that it was okay before to commit these crimes like because the INTENT not addressed and this law encompases that making it no longer okay.

The crime listed below along with crime against Matthew Shepard who was tied to a fence, beat and left to die because of his was gay, and James Byrd, a Texas man who was brutally murdered by being dragged behind a pickup truck because he was African American, all were okay before because well, they weren't crimes since they involved the hate as the intent.

Two years after son's death, mother finds solace in hate crimes bill - CNN.com
So your logic to me, in it's simplest form means, since the intent was hate the crime itself was okay before.

In your explanation of using the court system, how about the DA did a shitty job and didn't prosecute the actual crime properly?

this is ridiculous, cyn. I'm really surprised at this stretch coming from you.

dippin pretty much encapsulated my thinking on hate crimes legislation and why it is of benefit to our justice system. I always find the best way to comprehend the difference between crime and hate crime is to look at one of the less violent forms of crime that can incorporate hate and that is vandalism. Is it not obvious that there is a broad difference in intent between someone who spray paints graffiti on a subway car and someone who spray paints swastikas in a Jewish cemetary? Think about the difference in mindset behind each act. If you believe the latter should be punished more severely than the former, then you cannot not carry it through to punishment for the perpetration of violent crimes. They are NOT the same thing.

Are you serious? I don't see where he even implied that. Why would anyone think that?

Living in a very Jewish community, I get the vandalism aspect of it, since, most of us in the neighborhood can see it's affects firsthand as a Jewish person walks past a swastika or the defacing of one of the oldest synagogues in the US in our neighborhood. I get it for the vandalism aspect, I get extreme disconnect when I see it applied to crimes where there is already a sufficient description and punishment to mete out for the actual crime committed. So thus the murder and assaults of the examples I put before in my post are sufficient crimes to punish offenders. To say that the intent of hate for those crimes makes the crime "worse" is in effect then reducing the same crime if it were to happen without the hateful intent.

---------- Post added at 09:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:12 AM ----------

gay panic defense.... the judge and DA should have not accepted that as a reasonable defense.

I love the terrible examples people are providing. Lets compare spray painting subways to defacing graveyards? WTF! These aren't even in the same ballpark.

Lets try something relevant: spray painting a swastika or spray painting an anti-obama image, or an anti-Bush image, or an anti-gay marriage image, or an anti abortion, or pro abortion. Suddenly one or the other can become racist, or homophobic or whatever.

Don't you see how easily this can be politicized? Depending on the political views of the cop and prosecutor you could easily see a easier or worse sentence coming about.

Lets prosecute the ACT of spray painting the subway and not use the subjective views of the cop and prosecutor to punish the act.

This is true, but it has little to do with my complaint, which is that dippin isn't implying that hate crimes are to make up for a complete lack of crime. It's about degrees of wrongdoing.

His example here was merely to demonstrate how bad the problem can get.

This is why I object to it. You're stating that it's degrees of wrong doing. It's already wrong. There's already an intention or unintentional, such as murder versus manslaughter.

But really, no one knows for sure that hate is the motivator, it isn't easily detected 100% of the time. It's easy to pick out from a white to black, straight to gay, but what about El Salvadorian to Mexican, Indian to Pakistani? Can you tell when the offended and the offender are both the same color?

Did you know that most of the time, those are hate crimes too? Iraqi Sunni to Iraqi Shiite and Serbian to Croat, we're accustomed to those in some degree because we are media induced to see them as such. But in our courts will we be fair and even handed to deciding which is and what is a hate crime?

It's not just about being wrong or right; there are degrees of wrongdoing. If I stole a car, why would I be treated differently than if I stole a pair of shoes? I could be sentenced for a decade or so compared to a few months, if at all. Why not just charge me for being wrong? Why would it matter if it were a car? All I did was steal something. Why not have some generic "stealing stuff" law that applies to anyone who steals anything? Maybe set every type of stealing crime at three months or something.

The same thing applies to hate crimes. It's not just an assault if I go after a gay man because he's gay. It's assault and a hate crime. I targeted a specific group. It's not random. It's more wrong than a random thing. I have purposely assaulted him because of what he is.

Well, of course, for it to be charged as a hate crime, there needs to be evidence.

I imagine it would have to be a clear case of intent. We hear the cases where gay men are lured to someone's home where they are beaten or killed. With enough evidence based on past and current factors, it may be deemed a hate crime. If a Sunni Iraqi-Canadian attacked a Shiite Iraqi-Canadian because they were Shiite, there would be a very good chance they would be charged for a hate crime in Canada if there were enough evidence.

No, they are not the same thing, I agree. That is my point. BUT, both of the crimes (by their actions) are vandalism. Are you agreeing that they should be punished according to their intent, or not? What if we compare vandalism in a Jewish cemetary that is not racially motivated to vandalism that is anti-Semitic? Do you feel they are the same crime. Perhaps that is a more relevant comparison.

I don't get your other comments. The legislation does not cover political opinions. Or are you suggesting that, by including gays and lesbians in this legislation, we have formally breached the 'slippery slope.' I don't buy it.

so that whole 'equal protection under the law' deal we have in the constitution, that can be thrown away now? specific groups of people get better protection because they are special?

---------- Post added at 09:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:59 AM ----------

so it's simple to think that someone who has a hatred for (insert special group here) is going to be deterred from committing murder because he'll get double life instead of just life? :shakehead:

The argument in this thread seems to be about whether or not there should be any hate crime legislation. According to the article
So, given that hate crime legislation exists, should it cover sexual orientation? I would say "yes".

Equal protection under the law is more important than ever. You see, this new expansion of the hate crime law is a way of ensuring that gays are protected as equal members of society compared to heterosexuals. Before this, there was no particular consequence for picking out homosexuals and targeting them with a crime. I don't know of any hate crimes where homosexuals are attacking heterosexuals for being straight. Let me know when it becomes a problem.

Hate crimes law isn't about offering "better protection" for "special people." It's about protecting groups that are targeted for specific reasons related to what they are religiously, racially, ethnically, sexually, etc.

Do you think the gay community felt equally protected before this law was passed?

before this piece of legislation, was it against the law to kill a man because he was gay?

so you're saying there was no penalty or violation of law to kill a homosexual?

you really don't realize that what you've said above is completely contradictory, do you?

if a gay person was killed, and their killer convicted, did the killer pay a penalty?

Very well said.

As far as I know, no. It was only against the law to kill a man.

No. There was only a penalty or violation for killing.

You really don't realize it's not.

Yes, a penalty for killing.

Have you missed the point completely?

I disagree. It was a sloppy attempt at the Socratic Method.

i'm unclear about the grounds for objecting to the idea of hate crimes as well. on this particular matter, i think red lemon is right, really: if the construct exists it makes no sense not to extend it to include crimes motivated by homophobia.

intent is obviously the key, but in the sense of a legal definition of intent. hate crimes are directed against entire categories of people, even as they are visited upon individuals who happen to occupy a position, one way or another, within that category. so you can look at this in two ways: one would be to say that all that matters is the individual action. this seems to be the conservative position. so the individual action may or may not have been motivated by racism--and the motivation would be important i suppose--but really what would matter is the particular machinery involved that resulted in the particular action. so the underlying idea i suppose is that you would move from the particular to the general.

the other way of seeing it would be to say that racism or homophobic crimes move from the general to the particular. they depart from, refer to and are structured by---even if that structuring is an *aspect* of the decision chain that results in a particular action---broader contexts in which racism or homophobia are articulated and situated as legitimate.

from there the idea seems obvious---and this isn't really saying much that dippin did not already say---hate crime is a mechanism within a legal system geared around individual actions taken in isolation to address the outcomes of political contexts which are understood by most people as being unacceptable, both in themselves and in their (real and potential) consequences. that's why the category exists.

a possible avenue for the debate to head down from here is the usual thing that lines up conservatives who like to pretend there is no racism, there is no homophobia on the one hand and other folk against them. there's also a problem that some folk dislike thinking in aggregates and prefer to pretend there's only individuals. but that seems to me a fantasy-space. but at least it's a different debate.

you could say that any definition of anything at all groups phenomena. that there is a construct "murderer" groups people who are convicted of murder. any category does that, legal or not. its what categories do.

so before, it was illegal to kill a man. Now, it's extra illegal to kill a man because he's gay and you'll be punished more, but this law doesn't provide extra protection to special groups, it only protects groups who are targeted because of extra-specific 'intentions'.

so did YOU miss the point completely or do you not understand the Socratic method?

It's not extra protection when the others in question have no equivalent need for it.

so one group of people get extra protection but its not extra protection because the 'others' have no need of it. the circular logic is mind blowing. :shakehead:

some groups are more equal than others

The thing is these groups need special protection because in the past there has been demonstrative prejudiced against them.

For example historically who do you think on average gets a harsher sentence?
A white guy who kills a black guy because he is black or a black guy who kills a white guy because he is white? Do people who assault gay people get as harsh of sentences as those who assault straight people? We have heard the gay defense often or even the Twinkie defense.

This is the same reason that certain southern states have to get permission to change election laws but other states don't. Past abuses have warranted these laws.

In the incredibly specific and rare case? Possibly not. Under nearly all other cases? Yes, absolutely.

Hate crimes legislation is the best we can do without actively damaging the First Amendment. It'd be very easy to go after gay-hating religious leaders for indirectly inciting their "flock" to violence, but if we do that we're violating their right to free speech and to have religious beliefs. All we can do is punish the guilty and use our own free speech to call out such leaders. It's the same with bigotry toward a different race, gender, or creed.

I think you preserved your mind with your false premise.

How is a law that protects homosexuals from being targeted for being homosexual "extra"? As a heterosexual, I don't need to be protected for being homosexual (or for being heterosexual for that matter).

Anyway, this whole thing is moot because under the law, we are protected from crimes based on sexual orientation, which technically means we're all covered equally.

The issue is that some groups aren't treated equally.

Unfortunately, the PC lobby has allowed us to miss what really constitutes a hate crime. And it isn't murdering someone because they are [insert your favourite prejudice here]. That's just murder. Plain and simple. To punish someone more harshly because they have acted on their prejudice is to DESECRATE the memory of all the other victims of murder who were killed for other reasons. It is little more than spitting on them. Somehow, THEY weren't worth as much as the hate-crime murder victim. It's a disgusting attitude. It also makes martyrs of the hate-crime victims family and denigrates the sorrow of the "normal" victims' families.

A hate crime is INCITING a crime out of prejudice, and should be punished harshly. If I convince someone that killing an American is ok because they are an American, that's a hate crime. I should be punished for the action of inciting hatred of Americans. The guy who listens to me is just a murderer and should be punished as such.

Anything else is a preferential treatment of an identifiable group and is anathema to a set of laws based on equality of all.

the issue is, that no we aren't. If I'm murdered because someone hates hippies, my killer gets life, but if someone who's gay is killed because they are gay, then that killer gets a harsher sentence or is deterred by the thought of a harsher sentence. now just how the hell does that come out to being equal?

Who said anything about anything being ok? Being charged with a hate crime doesn't dismiss the other counts.

But the fact is that the law already recognizes the importance of intent. Murder in the first degree is different from murder in the second degree because of intent. Assault in the first degree is different from assault in the second degree because of intent.

And without hate crime legislation, prejudice was being used to reduce sentences. I.e., the crime wasn't premeditated, it was a heat of the moment thing because the defendant is just so damn prejudiced against that group of people.



---------- Post added at 08:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:22 AM ----------

They aren't in the same ballpark, but the laws dealing with them were the same.

As far as "politicizing" the issue, language is clear about how clear the intent has to be. This whole "but they will accuse anyone who is anti- Obama" is a stretch that hasn't happened and can't happen following the letter of the law.

what does that mean?

I don't get to have EXTRA punishment against someone who killed my loved one because they aren't gay or a protected group?

I'm fine with HATE SPEECH crimes as expressed by MM, but as far as the crime itself, BG stealing a pair of shoes has levels of crime already, steal cheap shoes, it's petite larceny, steal Jimmy Choo boots, grand larceny.

so what in essence you're saying by the levels is that it's a WORSE level than the original crime, because if it's not then what's the point of the legislation?

Now, when I moved to NYC in 1991 it was close to the inception of bias crime units and investigations. Based on this old NYTimes article, apparently if I'm being harassed by someone by anonymous letters and phone calls, it's okay unless it's racially motivated, and that's someone else who gets to decide that.




---------- Post added at 12:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:30 PM ----------

so there you have it... the law already is in place because it recognizes the intent. It's then the DA and the rest of the justice system that needs to recognize this and not reduce the charges at all.

So are you for removing the distinctions of degrees in all offenses as well? Because the issue of intent in the law goes far beyond intentional and unintentional.

And I fail to see how it not being easily detected 100% of the time leads to the conclusion that it should not exist at all.

---------- Post added at 08:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:34 AM ----------

But it recognizes intent in the form of premeditation and planning. Both which undermine the sentencing of crimes against certain populations. There is a reason why the murderers of black men are sentenced to lesser sentences on average. There is a reason why the rape of a gay man is sentenced to a lesser sentence on average.

No, I'm saying that there is a system in place to allow for mitigating or aggravating circumstances, why further it with some sort of obfuscation like race, creed, or sexual orientation.

I take great umbrage to be treated differently, both in the scope of law and outside of the scope of law. Either we're all equal or we're not. It can't be that some are more equal than others.

You're not an absolutist on this issue. For whatever reason, Cynth is taking an absolutist stance on this, so it's not jiving with your take (a.k.a. reality).

You do understand that hate crime legislation applies than just to murder, right?

And while it was illegal to kill a man, you could show that the murder hated gay men, was violent to gay men, but he would still end up charged with murder 2 instead of murder 1 because he didn't premeditated and plan to kill that particular person. Hate crime legislation address the specific fact that crimes against certain groups were receiving significantly smaller sentences.

Oh, I see what you did there.

No the reality is that there are things on the books about crimes, and about intent, mitigating and aggravating factors...In my opinion this isn't much different than creating specific laws against talking on the cellphone or texting while driving. It's a stupid law because the CURRENT law isn't being enforced known as reckless driving.

Either we try to protect the nation as a whole to a cohesive group as a group, or we splinter them off into different groups and classes and protect one group more than another.

---------- Post added at 12:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 PM ----------


and that's where it is wrong. The enforcement of the law punishment of the law should have been even for all people regardless of orientation, creed, or color.

It is a failure of the justice system itself to protect and prosecute evenly and fairly.

But, again, this is bullshit. Hate crimes doesn't make people unequal. It doesn't give extra protection for anyone. It addresses intent, not the type of the victim.

Let's go over the examples again:

is spray painting a swastika in a jewish neighborhood the same as painting the subway car? Because without hate crimes legislation they are treated the same.

Is beating a gay man someone just happened to come across the same as a beating that comes from a fight over say, a girlfriend? Because both can claim the "heat of the moment" argument.

Those are qualitatively different crimes, and therefore should be treated differently.

Our laws recognize the differences in intent only when it comes to premeditation and malice against a specific person. Hate crimes legislation prevents people from using the heat of the moment argument to reduce sentences.


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."

Hate laws are an equalizer because they offer harsher punishments for people targeting specific social groups. The social groups protected under law have a history of being widely targeted. Now I don't know if hippies are being targeted and need similar protection (perhaps they are under "religion" or "political affiliation").

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.

Basically, there is a huge difference between being associated with a subculture and being gay.

Much worse came out of the world for hating Jews than for hating hippies. Perhaps this legislation will help prevent bad things from happening to the gay community.

It's as simple as this: if someone is killed because of what they are, there are two crimes at play: a murder and a hate crime.

It's silly to think we can legislate hate crimes laws under everything that anyone hates. What we do instead is legislate for hate crimes that are problems with specific groups: this has been narrowed down to things like religion, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation, race, ethnicity, etc. If someone is the victim of a crime because of some other reason, it's tragic. But the focus for hate crimes law is to provide protection to large and highly identifiable groups that have a history for being victimized for what they are. Without these laws they, as entire groups, aren't as equal as the average person. With a history of the group being targeted, an individual within that group lives with the probability of being targeted unlike those who aren't a part of a specific targeted group.

This is what I mean by it not being "extra" protection. It's merely protection to bring these groups closer to the baseline, i.e. a level of safety afforded to those not a part of these specific targeted groups.

But the limited recognition of intent is in part what led to that. Being able to claim heat of the moment out of one's own bigotry to reduce the charge or the sentence actually fell within the letter of the law.

this last point dippin makes is important, it seems to me.
because it points to what folk who oppose this are skirting around, trying not to argue.
are you saying that racism is not a problem? are you saying that homophobia is not a problem?
there are several ways to address broader contextual issues: one would be to change the culture in which racism &/or homophobia are made legitimate. given freedom of speech laws, you can't simply do that. you can do it via cultural or political pressure, but it's a diffuse and long-term process. but you can address the outcomes which are *enabled* by the persistence of these discourses (if you like)...and hate crimes is a way to do that.

so the question is only "double protection for individuals" if you refuse to see the social dimension of this and prefer to focus entirely on the individual, as if legal frameworks are not themselves social, as if the definitions they outline are not themselves socio-political expressions. the only viable alternative, even logically, for arguing otherwise is some notion of natural law. but that runs into so many problems that it's typically not worth bothering with.

so conservatives can't say "but we like being racist"---because in general it's not true. they can't say "we take racism to be a form of conservative speech and so using the famous slippery slope argument, we see ourselves as being next" because (a) it equates the two and (b) the argument is itself logically stupid.

so instead what you get is yet another version of the conservative-as-victim trope. and that's what these arguments against this move regarding hate crime law are really about. they don't have to make sense, really--they're motivated by a sense of conservative victimization. "other people now have more rights than i do"---which *only* makes sense if you frame out most of reality.

wrong. It IS extra protection by attempting to stop that specific victim from being a victim due to a special status by providing a harsher sentence. That leaves all other non special groups at a huge disadvantage to equal protection under the law. what is so difficult to see about that?


crock. of. shit. murder is murder. it doesn't make a murder more tragic because it was a black man or a gay man.

---------- Post added at 12:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:04 PM ----------

amazing the amount of obtuseness displayed to completely deny the preferential treatment afforded to groups of higher equality.

please explain why.

---------- Post added at 12:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:06 PM ----------

I thoroughly discount your entire argument. It's completely unacceptable when you equate conservative as being racist. Your statement has zero credibility.

read the post, dk.
jesus.

i read it. I also feel you only threw that in there so you wouldn't look bigoted about it. We all know how you feel about conservatives in general, so it's not a huge stretch of the imagination to believe you may actually feel that way, but claim it's generally not true, so you look more unbiased.

to be even more direct about your post, i'll start with this.

or you could do something really crazy and apply the law fairly and equally to all people regardless of gender, race, or orientation.

face facts and reality for once. hate crime laws do nothing but distort equal protection under the laws by imposing harsher sentences for crimes against another for belonging to a special group of people. It's like the idiot capital murder laws in texas. The first qualification to turn murder in to capital murder is if it's a law enforcement officer. Are you telling me that THAT is equal protection?

Would you care to explain how this is preferential treatment?

A hippie is living a particular lifestyle or has particular interests that are political, spiritual, and recreational, whereas a gay man is just living. On one hand, you have one following a lifestyle loosely based around an amorphous philosophy that erupted in the 60s. Or maybe they just happen to be really laid back. I don't know. But on the other hand, you have someone who happens not to be heterosexual.

Do you think it's all the same?

yes, it's all the same. we're all human beings who deserve to be treated equally. by imposing a harsher sentence on someone because they committed a crime against someone of a persuasion they hated, but the same crime against someone of like skin color or orientation, is providing special protection to the first class.

I guess you didn't read what I wrote in post 19.

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.

Deemed worse by whom? Certainly not by those of us who think people are equal and should be treated so.

Crock of shit is failing to recognize that the law already treats murders differently. You have murder in the first, second, and third degrees. And the law, without the hate crimes provision, actually benefits the racists because it allows for a "heat of the moment" argument.

And I've yet to see you address the several issues that are NOT related to murder. Because murder is only one of the crimes hate crimes legislation applies to.

In my neighborhood, they have extra police on horseback 2 units, a couple foot patrols, and a police van. The precinct is less than 2 blocks from the synagogue, and this happens during the Jewish Holy days.... it doesn't happen during Christmas, Diwali, or Ramadan.

how does the law benefit racists/homophobes/misogynists?

because the nature of the crime is really irrelevant. If you'd like, I can start using assault only.

What does Rodney king have to do with anything? Hate crimes legislation was already on the books at the time, and this opinion was actually written even before the Rodney King incident.

And as far as the quantitative support:

1. KELLINA M. CRAIG, “Retaliation, Fear, or Rage: An Investigation of African American and White Reactions to Racist Hate Crimes,” J Interpers Violence 14, no. 2 (February 1, 1999): 138-151.


1. JACK McDEVITT et al., “Consequences for Victims: A Comparison of Bias- and Non-Bias-Motivated Assaults,” American Behavioral Scientist 45, no. 4 (December 1, 2001): 697-713.


And this from a five minute search.

dk--you see hate crime law as distorting equal protection because you see yourself as being without what you imagine these "extra protections" to be.
so in the end, the only thing holding your position together is a sense that, somehow, you are a victim here.

you route this through a strict construction framework perhaps intuitively, perhaps instrumentally--i don't know--but it doesn't change anything. you could say that strict construction has any traction at all anywhere as a function of the same sense of conservative victimization. go back to some imaginary good old days when categories like racism werent problems in the same way they've become since--not that there were no such problems--but they were "normal" so werent, you know, problems. they were just part of the fabric of things.

and to be clear, i wasn't at all equating conservatives and racism--quite the contrary--i was saying that as a possible line of defense in an argument against hate crime law, that the equation of the two was precluded, not only because it'd be rhetorically goofy, but more because for most conservatives, the equation isn't true.
what i was doing was tracking how it is that the opposition to hate crime laws as such got placed in such an odd position, made to operate in such an odd and to my mind self-defeating way. and the center of it is because it's not possible to say what the center of the actual problem seems to be.

and with hate crime legislation, I become less valuable to provide protection of the law. If anothers murder is considered more tragic to society because of some special circumstance, but my murder is less tragic, therefore the offender deserves less punishment, what should one think?

you say racism/sexism/homophobism is more of a problem now than ever, so these new 'laws' are required, but you're placing the onus on the wrong people and you're incorrectly trying to provide fairness and equality.

The abstract of the first study (emphasis added):
An experimental study was conducted in an effort to establish whether hate crimes produce greater harm than similarly egregious crimes. Hate crimes are considered to be worse primarily because they are believed to be more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes and inflict distinct emotional distress on victims and members of the victim's social group or category. In this study, analogous samples of African American and White males observed two videotaped assaults motivated by racial bias in one case, and by an ambiguous motive in the other. Reactions were obtained following observation and revealed that emotional responses and expressed desire for retaliation were associated with participants' race but did not differ for the two types of assault. The findings are discussed in terms of the utility of current hate crime legislation as well as the implications of the observed racial differences.

No support for your assertion there.

And the abstract of the second study:
There has been a great deal of scholarly and practical discussion regarding treating bias crimes as separate and distinct incidents. Critics assert that bias crimes are not inherently different from comparable nonbias offenses and that the consequences for victims are similar. This study presents findings from an analysis of survey data obtained from bias and nonbias assault victims from the city of Boston. Although there are several limitations to the authors' data, findings from the respondents replicate prior empirical research and indicate that bias crime victims experience more severe psychological sequelae, for a longer period of time, than victims of similar nonbias offenses. Specifically, the level of intrusive thoughts, feelings of safety, nervousness, and depression were all significantly higher for bias crime victims.

Without reading the full study, and I haven't had that chance, there are a couple of things that stand out here. The authors acknowledge several limitations to their data. Meta-research always faces this problem in that different studies have different parameters and research methodologies, making direct comparisons difficult and limiting (but not invalidating) the accumulated results.

Secondly, I question whether the intensity of the psychological impact to the victim can be strictly attributed to crime itself. It is the knowledge of the perpetrator's prejudice that exacerbates the sequelae. If the victim has, prior to the crime, been subjected to prejudicial treatment, and has as a result suffered an actual psychological trauma, or even a heightened concern because of the prejudicial treatment, then that must be considered in assessing the differences in the post-crime impact. I have no knowledge of whether or not that was considered, but if I were involved any study design around this, I would certainly try to account for it. I doubt they did (with no basis other than my own prejudice and history of reading sociological studies), and the fact that this is meta-research, not an actual study in itself.

You should read more than the abstract. Especially the part where she talks about interpretations of the ambiguous assault. Let me just skip to the last couple of sentences of the article for you: "Therefore, policy makers are accurate in their conceptualization of hate crimes as specially heinous and egregious because, at least for some populations, they are likely to provoke retaliation."


By the way, the hate crimes legislation is old. What is new is the inclusion of sexual orientation as a category.

And crimes where the victim was a minority still receive much shorter sentences, on average.

Yes, I agree. We all should be treated equally. That's why we need to do something to stop people from murdering gays. When a homosexual is murdered for being homosexual, that has an impact on the gay community. It's a form of intimidation, it's a communication of hatred to the community.

It doesn't apply if a gay man kills a gay man...because in all likelihood this murder wasn't motivated by a hatred of gays. There is no comparison.

I'm really not getting what you're arguing....

If people were treated equally, there wouldn't be a problem with gay being murdered or otherwise abused for being gay. There is a problem with this, is there not? If we are to be protected equally under the law, we should feel equally protected, no? Something should be done if a gay man feels uneasy about being in gay in public. Being heterosexual in public isn't usually an issue; neither is being a hippie.

Homosexuals have had to hide their sexuality for fear of being ridiculed or persecuted or destroyed. (And many still do.)

I don't know why you're wondering about equal protection for unequal crimes.

I don't know your neighbourhood. In my old neighbourhood, there was a huge Kosher section in the grocery chain outlet. I couldn't find Ayurvedic or Halal sections. I'm guessing it's because they didn't need them or perhaps they weren't concerned about there being any real issues of not having them.

this doesn't give your argument any credibility whatsoever, especially when those 'policymakers' also claimed that the growth and use of a weed on someones private property has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, whether that product is legal or not.


where does the fault lie with that?

---------- Post added at 01:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:26 PM ----------

I can see quite clearly you're not getting what i'm arguing. Especially when you're saying this "That's why we need to do something to stop people from murdering gays." when we should all be saying this "That's why we need to do something to stop people from murdering other people."

anything else is just favoring one portion of society over another, i.e. special protection.

This is what we're getting snagged on. It's not favouring gays over others. It's fighting crime against people based on sexual orientation. How is that favouring gays? Everyone has a sexual orientation.

This is a penalty in addition to the penalty of the murder.

Why is there a difference between murder and manslaughter? The end result is the same: someone is dead. If everything were so equal, the penalty would be the same. But that's not the case.

Call it "special protection," "favoritism," or whatever you want, but in terms of a just society, this law was passed with the interest of the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of homosexuals across the country. If people are going out of their way to interfere with that with regard to this group specifically, then they should be penalized for it specifically.

And a gay man who hates heteros and kills one? Or a black who hates whites and kills one? Would anyone EVER try to even consider that as a hate crime?

No.

And there's the rub.

Except that the law also characterizes those as hate crimes, and people have been charged with those.

Table 1 - Hate Crime Statistics 2007

in 2007 828 people were charged with anti-white bias crimes, and 19 with anti heterosexual bias crimes.

In summary, people here feel that hate crime laws are an affront on.....their white christian male-ness?

The law does NOT say look at crimes against gays, blacks, women and jews differently, it says it looks at crimes motivated by sexual orientation, race, gender or religion differently. The fact that so many of you are extrapolating that to mean "only non-white male christians are being protected" is ludicrous

well, you totally read that wrong, didn't you?

it is ludicrous because it's not necessary. enforce the laws equally and without prejudice. how hard is that to do?

apparently it's extremely difficult, otherwise the law wouldn't be necessary

but it's not a law to fix a broken law. again, what this is trying to do is legislate for the failure of a small portion of society and it's bigotry. It does it by elevating the legal protection of other groups. it's immoral and should be unconstitutional.

Except people have been charged with hate crimes for anti-white, anti-christian, and anti heterosexual bias.

and why were those necessary?

Because just as we distinguish between crimes that are premeditated and those that are not, between crimes that are done with malice and those that are not, we should distinguish against crimes that are done targeting an entire segment of the population.

thought crimes laws, right?

No more thought crimes than distinguishing between premeditated and not premeditated, malice or no malice, and so on.

Someone needs to clear up the "this makes murdered gay people more important than murdered straight people" premise.....I'm fascinated by its absurdity.

It is kind of absurd. It actually doesn't prioritize murder victims based on some sort of protected class criteria. What it does to is add another level of punishment based on the perpetrator's motivation, which is actually nothing new.

I'd be curious to see the statistics in which these crimes actually have a clear "hate" motivation. My problem with hate crimes is that it's nearly impossible to estabilish intent without a confession, or witnesses testifying that said person was spueing hate speach while committing said crime. Is it possible that alot of people have been charged and convicted for a hate crime for which the victim just happened to be of a different race, creed, sexual orientation and the purpotrator didn't neccessarily commit the crime because of those reasons?

Whether or not a law is difficult to prosecute has no bearing on whether there should be that law or not. After all, the same thing can be said for all the variations of the charges of murder and homicide.

But my point is that if somebody gets into a bar fight for example, over something as trivial as a sporting event, and the person who lost the fight just happened to be gay, would it be fair to charge him with a hate crime on top of assault? Would that be just?

That's where it gets hairy IMO when it comes to hate crime laws.

Which is why, as with any other crime, the person has to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

It is no different than trying to the decide whether the hypothetical brawler should be charged with assault in the first degree and assault in the second degree, or even with sexual assault. The difference in the three types of assault is one of intent.

This is interesting to me. It sounds like you'd like to see the statistics, but then it also sounds like even if you saw them, you'd assume they were inaccurate.

In any case, you've summed up, with hate crimes as an example, one of the problems with all criminal prosecutions: the evidence is often incomplete and biased.

I wouldn't assume they were inaccurate. Statistics are statistics, if they prove me wrong I would accept it. I'm not against them per say, but I feel they further divide us alinto subgroups instead of making everyone equal under the law.

As has been pointed out, hate crimes require evidence just as anything else. Doing something bad to a gay person does not make it a hate crime. Doing something bad to a gay person because he is gay does.

As has been noted, different levels of crime based on intent is nothing new whatsoever. Hate crime legislation doesn't make gay people more valuable than straight people any more than the victim of premeditated murder is more valuable than the victim of a crime of passion. If your problem with hate crimes truly is the sense that victims of a crime with the same result are being treated differently, then I can't see any reason why you'd support different degrees of murder either. In all cases, someone is dead.

Of course, the legal system isn't your own personal revenge machine, so it doesn't really give a fuck about the victim (at least, it shouldn't). The law is there to judge the criminal and create a safer society for us all to live in. So, we collectively decide that we are generally more forgiving of someone who murders in a crime of passion than someone who commits a premeditated act of murder. Likewise, we collectively decide that crimes against someone specifically because they are a member of an oft-persecuted group should be especially discouraged. Such crimes have a negative psychological effect on the whole group and are particularly detrimental to society.

I just see an opportunity for abuse of the system. People being charged with hate crimes because of the race, creed, or orientation of the victim, even though the purpotrator may not have had that intention. An over zealous DA can certainly take advantage.

You do know that hate crimes has been part of the legislation since 1969, right? The only thing new is the addition of sexual orientation. And the number of people charged with hate crimes is significantly less than the number of crimes that cross race/gender/religious boundaries.

And the overzealous DA will still have to make the case for intention in a court of law.

In any case, again, how is this different from determining the intent in any other case? A person throws a rock, hits the other in the head, killing them. The person who threw the rock can be charged with anything from manslaughter in the third degree to murder in the first, all depending on the intent of the person.

It just seemed like you were requesting statistics with your first sentence, but then used the rest of the paragraph to point out that you doubted it would be possible for those statistics to be accurately gathered.

In any case, this law isn't contributing to inequality under the law. We can all be victims of hate crimes.

Yes I do know that is has been around for quite a while. I'm just of the opinion that in order to irradicate inequality(racism, homophobia etc.) then all must be on an equal footing, not be divided into subgroups under the law. Again just my opinion.