Thoughts on Hate Crimes

When you are convicted of murder, the official stance of the government is that it does not matter if you killed someone for drug money, for money to feed your kids, randomly, in a psychotic rage, because the victim was black, because the victim was gay, because you were in a hurry to get to work and wanted to drive on the sidewalk as a shortcut, because you saw murder on TV and thought it looked cool, or because the victim slept with your wife. The victim's rights were violated equally no matter what the reason was. It has nothing to do with morality -- the reason murder is illegal is not because it is "immoral" by some rich white guy's standards but rather because it severely violates the rights of the victim.

Passing hate crime legislation would allow the government to pass moral judgements on people. This is not the place of the government. Who decides what is moral and what is not? It certainly shouldn't be those in Washington - everything would be legal! I do think it's immoral to kill someone because of their race or sexual orientation. But do I want to have my government enforce my morals or rather protect my rights? Seeing as how everyone has a different set of morals, I'd like to stick to the Constitution and protecting our rights.

In the eyes of the government, every murderer is equally guilty. And unless you want the government to start forcing someone else's morality onto you, I suggest you fight to keep it that way. This is America. We condemn actions, not thoughts or speech.

First, one common opposition against hate crimes is that motive shouldn't affect the sentencing or anything like that. But motive has ALWAYS been taken into account. Killing someone in self-defense is still killing, it's just your motive for it that is different from just killing them for the fun of it. If motive is irrelevant than self-defense, mental defect, or anything else doesn't mean anything.

But it does seem like it would be wrong to treat the killers of Matthew Shepard, or the guys down in Texas who dragged the black guy with their truck worse than someone else who did the equivalent crime, just without the motive of bigotry. If three guys tied a while guy to their truck, and dragged him for miles, they should be treated the same, because of the cruel nature of the crime.

Maybe the laws shouldn't be against the motive as much as the method. That the penalty for a crime should definately take into account the method in which it was performed. And when a crime is just horribly cruel, torturous, and inhumane, the person should be looked at differently. And maybe this would cover most of what are currently hate crimes, because the rage and hatred of the person who committed the crime is often obvious in how they performed the crime.

I do worry about the poor treatment of minorities by various people in this country, and see the good intentions of wanting to protect them from all the bigotry. Perhaps not give more jail time for those committing hate crimes, but instead, try and get them into programs to encourage tolerance and empathy?

Passing hate crime legislation would allow the government to pass moral judgements on people. This is not the place of the government... In the eyes of the government, every murderer is equally guilty. And unless you want the government to start forcing someone else's morality onto you, I suggest you fight to keep it that way. This is America. We condemn actions, not thoughts or speech.

This is completely untrue: you have first-degree and second-degree murder to start with. This is a distinction based precisely on thoughts i.e. intent. What is more, law has never been an abstract set or moral codes that are somehow "fair". Fundamentally law is about the moral intervention into our personal lives despite what theConstitution might say.

That is why paedophilia is a more serious offence than a "normal" sexual crime and drugs are outlawed: these are all judgements based on morals. No one would argue that paedophilia is somehow "right" but, nevertheless, implementing additional punishments is a moral judgement. The point is that laws have to be passed to control our behaviour when that behaviours is deemed "wrong". If hate crime is becomming such a problem that these laws are required then that is just part of the natural evolution of law.

The problem everyone here is having is a basic issue of law not hate crime: law has always been about policing baheviour and, indirectly, thought. You are fooling yourselves thinking that hate crime is some sort of special exception.

And you say that your "stances on additional punishment for paedophiles and the War on Some Drugs" are consistent with your arguments but offer no reasoning or evidence. If you despise hate crime legislation then you should despise all forms of law that create "special circumstances" for certain subdivisions of a crime or make judgements on certain lifestyles.