[Jenn]

In article
,
RapidRonnie wrote:

"Hate crime" laws are dangerous because they criminalize a belief,
not an action,

We do that all the time, of course. Was a murder a "crime of passion"
or was it premeditated? Makes a difference in the charge and the
penalty.

and once one belief is a crime, any belief-or lack
thereof- can be made a crime. Don't believe in transubstantiation, the
virgin birth, or the necessity of burning witches before they can
deprive the community's men of their privy members? Die for heresy!
That was exactly what happened 300+ years ago.

But a hate crime has a crime. You aren't charged with the hate. You're
charged with the underlying crime, but with enhanced penalty. We can
debate the philosophy behind this if you would like to do so.

It's very dangerous because it makes some motives in effect illegal.
It essentially means thoughtcrime.

If a bad guy drags a human being to his or her death behind a truck,
is it a worse act because he disliked that person's race or sexuality
than, say, because the draggee was a Mets fan or because he owed the
assailant five hundred bucks for dope?

The Jasper, Texas case occurred when a white convict who had been
raped by blacks in prison dragged a black convict behind his truck.
Now the white convict committed a horrible crime, and was punished, in
my opinion, properly. But it would have been just as proper if the
draggee had been white, or if the perpetrator had no discernible
history of White racial activity.

What's going to happen is that certain groups are going to become
especially protected, for one thing, and that means nonmembers will be
less protected by the same laws. Additionally, people with "wrong
attitudes" and "incorrect beliefs" will be marked for special
harassment.

Sooner or later a different group will get hold of power and these
laws will be used in ways you don't expect-and, I can safely predict,
will not like. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find blasphemy a de
facto crime in certain states, as well as other Biblical offenses.
There are preachers running around right now advocating the death
penalty for blasphemy, heresy, cursing one's parents, sorcery and
necromancy. To say nothing, of course, of good old "crimes against
nature"...which have nothing to do with pollution or ecology, but any
deviance from the standard , one male one female you-know-what. Is
that the sort of America you would find desireable or even tolerable?

I sure wouldn't.

Every hate crime statute that I'm aware of contains language stating
that in order to qualify for the enhanced penalty, a crime must be
committed with the intent to terrify or intimidate a group or class of
people. I don't know of any successful hate crime prosecutions where
such motivation wasn't proved. The philosophy behind the laws is that a
hate crime targets more than just the actual victim; indeed, by the
nature of the crime, there IS more than one victim. I can certainly
understand your POV; I've thought about this issue a great deal.