My sister is a lesbian and I was hanging out with her and her girlfriend/whatever. Somehow the topic came up about gay guys and rednecks have nothing on her hate for a homo male. She went off for a good hour about how they were scum and should be rounded up and shot etc... I thought she was going to get violent but she didn't. I "thought" that they (homosexuals) would understand each other or something but dayum. I'm not gay btw but I do talk like one for teh funnies sometimes though i still can't figure out how the hell they do the "s" sound.

relcec: and that's exactly why it is ridiculous.
breaking someone's nose isn't any less offensive to society when someone does it because someone thought someone snatched a sideways glance at their girlfriend than if they did because the victim was albanian.
murdering someone isn't less offensive when someone's daughter is killed because she was a the wrong place at the wrong time than if she was of your chosen protected ethnicity.
in your desire to show your empathy for disadvantaged groups you've gone off the rails and are now advocating different levels of punishment for the exact same crime.

... so, why exactly did we go to war with Iraq and Afghanistan, if 9/11 was no more offensive than a bunch of individual murders?

Gyrfalcon: RexTalionis: Gyrfalcon: Better idea: Drop the "hate crime" thingy, and just charge people with whatever crime they commit. Why is it any MORE of a crime because two thugs beat up a black man, as opposed to two thugs beating up a black man "because" he is black? Either way, they committed a felony, so throw their sorry asses in jail. Don't give them some kind of reverse badge of honor to strut behind when they get there.

The same reason why we have punitive damages and double/treble damages on the civil side. The whole point is to make a case of it so that it shows to the other people that "This is bad - as policy, we aren't going to stand for this kind of behavior, so we will punish you fittingly if you do engage in this activity."

Civilly, yes. Criminally, I'm not so sure. The problem is, how do you define it? if my hypothetical two thugs beat up the black man, and don't use any racist epithets during the attack, was it a hate crime? What if they bragged to their thug friends beforehand? What if they didn't? What if they were known Klansmen...but on THIS occasion they beat up the guy because he owed one of them money and not primarily because of his race? What if two black thugs beat up a white guy? What if the white guy happens to be a Klansman? Who owed one of them money?

The problem as I see it is, absent an obvious motive--like a cross-burning or lynching--how can any one-on-one crime be proven to be a "hate" crime? It eventually becomes either a he-said/he-said situation, or a situation where any mixed-race violence is de facto a "hate crime" unless proven otherwise. Which is why I think the "hate" aspect needs to be taken out of it. When you have a situation (as they did in Santa Monica a while back) where two kids having a fight over a girl becomes a "hate crime" because one called the other the n-word during the scuffle, then it's time to rethink the definition.

Thank you for laying this out the practical aspects so clearly. I had addressed it as a problem of theory, of basic criminal equality, but you've done an excellent job of explaining the great difficultly at the other end of the law, where the rubber meets the road. In my mind, the very notion that someone could get a different sentence for the same direct action, based on what a court *believes* was their motive, seems unlikely to be constitutional.

RexTalionis: Gyrfalcon: The problem is, how do you define it?

Simple. By giving the finders of fact all the evidence and letting them figure out whether it is or it isn't.

Let's try a parallel hypothetical, then: How would you propose that we determine if someone is trolling or not? I think that follows a similar enough theory of intent to help us get a handle on how hate crime enforcement should work.

Also relcec; if you were to unknowingly walk into the wrong bar, and find that you were in a bar where your race (I'm going to assume that you're white) was very unwelcome, and you received a severe beating for the offense of being white, you wouldn't want the perpetrators charged with a hate crime? You do realize that under the right circumstances, you are also a member of a "protected" class?

Repo Man: In the real world, motive matters.

No argument here, but let courts handle this on their own. Hate crimes are an attempt by the legislature to invade the judiciary's purview over such matters.

Theaetetus: ... so, why exactly did we go to war with Iraq and Afghanistan, if 9/11 was no more offensive than a bunch of individual murders?

Your question is a bit of an overreach, in that terrorism is categorically different from individual murder, as it has a different intent and motive, and different societal effects. The former is, after all, as I said above, a federal matter, while the latter a state matter. That alone draws some important differences.

So I don't agree with the premise for your question, but I do feel that these wars have yet to be defended with adequate rational explanations.

Repo Man: Also relcec; if you were to unknowingly walk into the wrong bar, and find that you were in a bar where your race (I'm going to assume that you're white) was very unwelcome, and you received a severe beating for the offense of being white, you wouldn't want the perpetrators charged with a hate crime? You do realize that under the right circumstances, you are also a member of a "protected" class?

Self-interest should never justify any structural legal change that creates any unequal treatment. The law is for everyone, and must treat everyone equally.

Theaetetus: Just checking in. I had a banquet for one of the kids, and I have papers to write, so I doubt we can continue in this thread. I appreciate your tone throughout and look forward to seeing you elsewhere. Goodluck, and Godspeed!

I love you man. You frickin' Yankee :)

RexTalionis: Sylvia_Bandersnatch: Let's try a parallel hypothetical, then: How would you propose that we determine if someone is trolling or not? I think that follows a similar enough theory of intent to help us get a handle on how hate crime enforcement should work.

Actually, let me propose to go one step further. How do you determine whether someone is angry at you? Or desirous of harm upon you? Or friendly? Or condescending?

We humans are not mind readers. However, we can, generally, make determinations of motivations based on the totality of evidence that we can observe or see (well, for most people, anyway).

The question before us is: Assuming that's true -- and I do believe it is, *sometimes* -- should specific action based thereon be chiefly a purview of jurisprudence, on a case-by-case basis during the sentencing face of existing criminal acts otherwise actionable apart from motive, or of legislatures, through narrowly crafted criminal codes specifically and exclusively addressing motive? More to the point, should the motive for a crime, *if* ascertainable, constitute a *separate* charge -- separately actionable and separately sentenced? Because that's what hate crime laws are: separately defined crimes, based *entirely* on ascertaining the motive of another crime.

I strongly support the reporting and recording of so-called hate crimes, but I maintain that describing specific and separate criminal acts, under the same or similar description, at best strains constitutional concepts of equal protection, and at worst offends them.

Sylvia_Bandersnatch: Your question is a bit of an overreach, in that terrorism is categorically different from individual murder, as it has a different intent and motive, and different societal effects.

Yes, that's my point. Similarly, hate crimes (or rather, "assault with intent to intimidate" or "murder with intent to intimidate" or "arson with intent to intimidate") are also categorically different from said crimes without the additional motive, and have different societal effects. I burn down your house, that's one thing. I burn down your house, while planting a burning cross on your lawn and an "attractive and successful people go home" sign, that's another. And that's what hate crime legislation realizes.

The former is, after all, as I said above, a federal matter, while the latter a state matter. That alone draws some important differences.

Actually, that's not one of the differences. State and federal criminal statutes are different in jurisdiction (namely, whether the action occurred across state lines or outside of the country), but they aren't different in scope.

So I don't agree with the premise for your question, but I do feel that these wars have yet to be defended with adequate rational explanations.

Well, that, we can agree on. My sole point in bringing them up was that, other than size, terrorism and hate crimes are really two sides of the same coin. Both are not merely about the individual victim, but rather are an attempt to efficiently intimidate an entire population of people similar to the victim. "Don't be around here while being X" is the message in both crimes.

KyDave: Theaetetus: Just checking in. I had a banquet for one of the kids, and I have papers to write, so I doubt we can continue in this thread. I appreciate your tone throughout and look forward to seeing you elsewhere. Goodluck, and Godspeed!

I love you man. You frickin' Yankee :)

Happy to be of service. You can be entirely wrong about everything from the color of the sky to the flavor of bacon, but I'm not going to call you names if you don't explicitly deserve it, you inbred hick. :)

Threadjack: Hey, Rex, did you mention elsewhere you're in Boston, or was it New Yawk or D.C.? If the former, we should get together for a drink and talk law at each other. EIP.

UnspokenVoice: Repo Man: UnspokenVoice: My humble opinion...

The hate crime laws WOULD be fine if they included something along the line of, "with the intent of causing harm to a group of people." As it is I can only think of a couple of articles that I've read where hate crime sentencing would be justified.

Let's just be honest and say that it is currently used to scare people into plea agreements or to punish people more because certain groups of people are considered a protected class - something that is inherently wrong. I haven't a problem with punishing people based on the motive but beating someone up because they're gay AND bothering you doesn't mean you were trying to stop other people from being gay nor does it mean your intentions were to terrorize the group as a whole.

Current uses of the law, this case for example, are lacking that. That is, of course, unless there is more information that is not in this article which could easily be the case.

Being straight is also a protected class. As in, if a group of gay men decided to beat up a straight man just for being straight.

I don't know of any case law supporting that statement. I would be kind of curious about it though it doesn't negate my point at all. Do you have any cases to support your claim? I know that, in theory, you could be correct much as saying elves could be a protected class.

I did some looking, but I'm not too surprised that I wasn't able to find a case where gay men straight bashed a guy. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it has happened, but cases of straight or conflicted men bashing gays will obviously numerically dwarf any outlying incidents of this nature. Eraser8 gave an example of a case of a white boy beaten by a group of black boys that was prosecuted as a hate crime up thread. That seems like a sufficient example to me.

Sum Dum Gai: gadian: If I'm ever caught beating the shiat out of someone, I'm doing it because I HATE them, regardless of their color, gender, religion, sexual identity, whatever. I'd imagine most crimes are hate crimes in the right framework.

If you beat up an individual because you hate them, you commit a crime against the individual. If you beat up an individual because you hate a group, you commit a crime both against the individual and the group.

That's idiotic. But then, so is the"hate crime" concept. It's so nice to know that equal protection under the law is more equal for some than for others.

RexTalionis: Theaetetus: Threadjack: Hey, Rex, did you mention elsewhere you're in Boston, or was it New Yawk or D.C.? If the former, we should get together for a drink and talk law at each other. EIP.

Sorry, man, I'm much closer to New York than I am to Boston. Boston's something like 4 hours away.

New Jersey's not a real state. Even your Governor admits that.

RexTalionis: If you have a problem with legislatures mucking about in criminal codes, then you don't just have a problem with the "hate crime statutes" but also essentially the totality of modern criminal law.

You're missing my point, which is that motive is quite apart from action. You previously argued that motive is ascertainable, in context of supporting specific legislation relating thereto. We do not agree on this point. I feel very strongly that it is only within the scope of a given and specific case that motive may be ascertainable, if at all, and that it is only appropriate for that court, within its own discretion, to make such determination for that specific case. I do not feel that legislatures, remote from such proceedings, are in any position to suggest what kinds of determinations should be made based on crudely broad descriptions, never mind what sort of separate sentencing guidelines may be appropriate based on such determinations. That's actually a pretty narrow consideration and argument, in view of the entirely of the law in whole. So for you to suggest that that somehow translates to my rejecting the proper legislative role in jurisprudence as a whole is simply absurd. Not the least also because, if I really did feel that way, it would be equally absurd for me to argue the point of *any* law. I appreciate that you're trying to make a point here, but it doesn't appear to be based on what I actually said and what I actually meant. It seems more likely that you skimmed my reply, from a view that I already disagreed with you broadly, which I do not, and formulated an interpretation from that. Unfortunately, that approach now wastes both our time, because I can't simply walk away without appearing to disrespect you, which I don't intend.

In respect to terrorists attacks responce to an attack on the nation is solely the purview of the federal government. Surely you know this. It's not merely a matter of scale. You should know this also.

Finally, your argument that terrorism and hate crimes are more or less conflatable is an untenable view, because it presumes motive as the main defining characteristic. This is only a valid theory of hate crimes, however, and that only because the very concept of hate crimes is wholly dependent on that theory. In point of fact, however, terrorism occurs for as many different reasons as there are terrorists. We know this because they freely tell us as much. And a great many times, it is not primarily based on nor defined, by either party, as class-based, but just as often, if not more so, on specific complaints or goals. None less than Osama bin Laden clarified that the 9/11 attacks were mainly about the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. It was not, by similar definition, a 'hate crime' against the U.S. as a whole, nor Americans generally. Though he has said such things, it's not defensible to argue from that that terrorism is necessarily a hate crime. So please just drop that, or come up with a more plausible analogy.

You seem determined to prove to me that I must be wrong, but I really have given this many years of thought, and discussed it often with various legal experts. You're very unlikely to persuade me here and now in this venue.

I'm very sorry, but it's late now and I need to be up earlier. This is interesting, but I just don't have time for it at the moment. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Magorn: Oh_Enough_Already: White guys so much as steps on the shoe of a black person on a crowded subway car = "hate crime."

Pack of feral blacks randomly assault, murder, rob and rape people expressly and exclusively because they're white (AKA every day in America) = "nothing to see here, move along."

Gotta love tolerance, huh?

and I'm sure you can cite a single time, other than in your own imagination, inwhich the law has ever been applied that way

Of course it never happens that way, you nitwit, but when blacks are able to - and do - successfully blame "racism" for every single thing that goes wrong in their life while, at the same time, killing, murdering, and maiming whites expressly because they are white in the commission of bonafide "hate crimes" without ever being charged for said, it belies the BS nature of these things if they only ever get charged in one direction.

Theaetetus: KyDave: Theaetetus: Just checking in. I had a banquet for one of the kids, and I have papers to write, so I doubt we can continue in this thread. I appreciate your tone throughout and look forward to seeing you elsewhere. Goodluck, and Godspeed!

I love you man. You frickin' Yankee :)

Happy to be of service. You can be entirely wrong about everything from the color of the sky to the flavor of bacon, but I'm not going to call you names if you don't explicitly deserve it, you inbred hick. :)

Done with papers for tonight; off to bed.

WTH you know about the flavor of bacon? You taunting me, now?? That's not kosher err.. cool

I know this fat farking dike who looks like fabio who just hates all men in general.

RexTalionis: don't you see?

We don't seem to be communicating here. Yours seems to me a pedantic argument based on semantics. I don't find that a constructive basis for a rational discussion likely to succeed in mutual understanding.

I suggest you go back and study the Rockefeller drug laws to get a idea of what my concerns are.

beware the groid dykes

Uchiha_Cycliste: Oh_Enough_Already: t, but when blacks are able to - and do - successfully blame "racism" for every single thing that goes wrong in their life while, at the same time, killing, murdering, and maiming whites expressly because they are white

oh bullshiat, you racist asshole

Either I'm wrong or I'm right.

If I can show you I'm right, will you admit it?