[Praetor]

Currently, federal prosecution is possible for hate crimes committed on the basis of a person's race, color, religion, or national origin. The House of Representatives and the Senate have passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which would add crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability to the list.

[NYYS]

I oppose all hate crime laws. A murder is a murder and a rape is a rape.

How is it any different if someone beats up a guy because he's gay than if it is if he's rich?

[smashthestate]

The motivation of a crime is not related to justice. I oppose all hate crime laws.

[Dave]

I oppose all hate crimes laws.

[Goranhammer]

Gonna go with the crowd. I detest all hate crime legislature as well.

As mentioned before, a crime isn't any more or less of a crime based on the victim's orientation. More importantly, it can be exploited for misrepresentation. If some dude was fucking with you in a mall or parking lot to the point where you had to lay him out flat, he could play the "gay card" (similar to the race card) and land you in a greater heap of shit. You could be labeled a bigot and gay-basher even though you hit a guy you didn't know was gay.

Besides, what is the point? You'd have to be a drooling retard to think this creates any sort of deterrence for gender-based violence.

[Praetor]

The motivation of a crime is not related to justice. I oppose all hate crime laws.

Try convincing a jury that a man decapitated his own child and buried the corpse in the woods without showing them his motive, and then tell me that.

[smashthestate]

Does the motive matter? The crime itself is pretty fucking disgusting and I think the jury would decide on the same punishment even if they knew the motivation.

[Praetor]

Does the motive matter?

In a trial by jury, yes it does. If a prosecutor doesn't show a criminal's reason for committing the unreasonable, the jury will have a hard time believing that the criminal committed the crime.

Motive is a crucial part of the state's case in just about any trial.

[Zyx]

If someone killed someone for a birthday celebration and someone killed someone by leaning on a air conditioner foolishly, the punishment should, and is, different.

I agree with this new extension because I agree that crimes are degreed based on damages and motivations. Meditation, prejudices, and degree of damage are important for prosecution. The extended punishment for prejudicial crimes is justifiable because prejudicial crimes are more recidivist. That is, if one attacks a person for being heterosexual in an effort to end heterosexuality then their fuel is unchanged. While, on the other side, if someone kills someone for harassing them then their fuel is changed and their threat to society is absent until the next harasser comes by.

In other words, I'm swimming upstream but I have a rope following me to carry someone along.

[Quercus Robur]

since I'm in favour of general measures to combat discrimination I'm behind hate crimes also. Hate crimes seek to make the recipient a symbol of the entire group which is is a distinct harm beyond the sum of the actual actions.

[smashthestate]

In a trial by jury, yes it does. If a prosecutor doesn't show a criminal's reason for committing the unreasonable, the jury will have a hard time believing that the criminal committed the crime.

First of all, I said that criminal motivation is not related to justice. I didn't say it wasn't related to trial (especially by jury).

Motive is a crucial part of the state's case in just about any trial.

Agree, but this is incidental.

If a man kills a person because he is black, and another man kills a person just because he feels like it, you don't end up with two different crimes. The motivations are different, yet you still end up with a dead person. The offender still killed someone. In both of these cases, justice would be the administration of deserved punishment for the crime of first-degree murder. Justice would NOT be accurately served if you sentenced the first man to more time than the second man.

[NYYS]

Try convincing a jury that a man decapitated his own child and buried the corpse in the woods without showing them his motive, and then tell me that.

Whoa whoa whoa, no one is saying that motives should be ignored. Just that they shouldn't add on to a crime. If you can show the jury that someone killed a man because he was gay and that gets a conviction, great. But it shouldn't add to the punishment.

If someone killed someone for a birthday celebration and someone killed someone by leaning on a air conditioner foolishly, the punishment should, and is, different.

Huh? Leaning on an air conditioner and having it accidentally hit someone on the head isn't murder at all, so of course the two are different.

[Nets]

Huh? Leaning on an air conditioner and having it accidentally hit someone on the head isn't murder at all, so of course the two are different.

Beat me to it.

I support Hate Crime legislation. When we make laws as a country, and their attendant punishments we are sending a message about what we stand for as a nation. I think violent crimes motivated by hatred, bigotry, homophobia etc. are more despicable than regular crimes and should be punished more heavily.

At the same time I think reasonable people can disagree on this and I understand where the people that voted "no" are coming from.

[Dave]

So murdering a man because he's black is worse than murdering a man at random? Or murdering him because you want his shoes?

[NYYS]

I wonder if a lot of the people voting yes would support legislation making murdering someone who is wealthy a hate crime. Or murdering someone who lives off the stock market. Or murdering someone for being Israeli.

[millie_(A)TCK]

So murdering a man because he's black is worse than murdering a man at random? Or murdering him because you want his shoes?

Because then your targeting a far larger group of people. Your not just murdering but being discriminatory as well.

[smashthestate]

I wonder if a lot of the people voting yes would support legislation making murdering someone who is wealthy a hate crime. Or murdering someone who lives off the stock market. Or murdering someone for being Israeli.

Or how about someone who is simply white?

A while back, 3 black men and 1 black woman carjacked the car of a white couple and then brutally raped, tortured, and murdered them, then stuffed their bodies into trash cans in front of their house. Not only was this left largely out of the news (and completely out of network news), but the crime itself was not even prosecuted as a hate crime.

It seems that in order to be a victim of a hate crime or hate speech, you have to be a minority group that has a social reputation of being 'oppressed' to begin with. Even though a crime committed against a white person which is racially motivated and hatefully carried out, it won't be prosecuted as a hate crime.

[QatzelOk]

What about the Iraqis who get killed just for being who they are? Does the invasion and occupation of this Arab country count as a hate crime since it was partially inspired by Islamophobia?

We're talking a million Mathew Shepards here.

That being said, I voted YES, though I also think the US media and government should fry for their manufacturing or racism and mass murder of Muslims. It was justified with racism - just look at all the Islamaphobic hate literature on this board, or in all our major commercial media.

[Grunch]

It seems that in order to be a victim of a hate crime or hate speech, you have to be a minority group that has a social reputation of being 'oppressed' to begin with.

So which minority group, in your opinion, gets an undeserved reputation for being oppressed?

[Dan]

I Oppose All Hate Crime Laws

Hate crimes are just silly.