April 06, 2007
Intellectually Lazy
Some Conservatives are against “hate crimes’. They feel these ‘thought police’ prosecutions are useless. Simply enforce the crime, they say.
Here’s what they don’t tell you.
1. Hate Crimes legislation already exists. It’s called ‘Federally protected activities’, but makes it a crime to " by force or threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with-- any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin -- (18 USCA 245).
The proposed ‘hate crimes’ legislation just wants to add orientation, gender, and disability to the (already existing) list. If people are ‘really’ opposed to hate crimes, then they should not merely be working to prevent the additions, but to have race, religion, ect removed as well.
2. You can not be arrested merely for saying something. This is the big lie that anti-hate crime supporters spread. The Hate Crimes is in enhancement. There needs to be an underlying crime, and the motivation for that crime needs to be due to race, ect. Then the enhancement kicks in. If you just yell ‘Fags’ or, more obviously, preach that homosexuality is bad – you can’t be charged with a hate crime.
North Dallas Thirty said (at April 6, 2007 05:34 PM):
Wouldn't bother me terribly. It's high time we got past the idea that punishment for something should be based on the victim's skin color, etc., rather than what was actually done to the person.
One would think that a liberal concerned with "equality" would support that -- unless, of course, the point is to scream "hate crime" on everything, regardless of what happened.
Henry said (at April 6, 2007 05:55 PM):
Typical.
So, by your logic, anytime someone falsely claims a crime happened (assuming that's the case in your example), then we should do away with that crime?
People didn't 'leap' to any conclusions. The victim said it was a hate crime. There was a witness. There was every reason to believe it happened.
And, certainly, there are plenty of Actual Hate Crimes against gays.
So, I’ll expect a post from you on how you advocate that race, religion, and creed should all be removed from the protected classes in Federal Statutes.
dolphin said (at April 10, 2007 10:52 AM):
The main reason hate crime legislation was enacted was to allow federal authorities who were trained in investigating such cases (irrational motives like hate often make the cases more difficult to solve), to step in. How anybody can oppose trying to get the most qualified law enforcement officer on the case is beyond me.
Of course, I've always wondered if the reason alot of Republicans opposed seeing these cases solved is because they're worried that locking up the perpetrators would cost them exactly that many votes.
Henry said (at April 12, 2007 02:04 PM):
Actually, part of the reason that there is Federal Jurisdiction is, during the civil rights movement, a lot of local jurisdictions refused to investigate/prosecute such crimes.
The same thing has happened, in the past, with Gay Bashing.