Quote:
Originally Posted by noonereal
No valid reason for such distinctions.
A crime is a crime.
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First, to answer the concern about "thought crimes", nobody is criminalizing thoughts but actions. What hate crime laws do is infer motive and intent from the circumstances of the crime. The fact of the matter is we already do that. A good example of this is in the various levels of homicide, ranging from involuntary manslaughter to "murder one".
As far as hate crimes are concerned, what distinguishes them from other types of crime is the intended victim. When someone sets fire to a black church, places a bomb in a synagogue or beats and tortures a gay man and leaves him tied to a fence to die we have what I'll call two "categories" of victim.
In the first category you have the people directly affected by the act: the people killed, injured or otherwise traumatized while in the church or synagogue and the gay man left for dead. Then you have the other category of victim. That would be
all blacks,
all Jews,
all homosexuals,
all ( ).
The victims of the first category are selected because of who they are as members of an identifiable group. Their identities or actions as individuals are of no relevance to the perpetrators. It's the groups to which they belong that's important and, as a result, the crimes send a message to all the other members of the groups. That message is as follows: "This could have been you and at some future time it might be."
This is purely and simply terrorism and is deserving of increased penalties reflective of the broad ranging effect that it has on groups within our society and on society as a whole. The corrosive effects of hate crimes on our society go far beyond the narrow scope of the mere acts. Our response to hate crimes must reflect that greater peril.
John