What's with hate crime laws?

this is why liberalism is dangerous

many people will disagree with you. they will say you are a racist and a bigot. they will try to tell you that "until we treat each other fairly the government must force us to treat each other fairly by treating us unfairly" or some other such nonsense. fact is murder is murder is murder and it doesnt matter why.

the goal of these laws are political in nature and not for the common well being of the people at large. this absurd notion that the motive behind a crime demands more or less stringent action by the state is an incorrect and contrived one.

In Canada you can be put in prison simply for saying being gay is wrong. The Humanist is a nutcase and has no clue how far these hate crime laws have gone. Kind of a moron in a bubble and he/she would most likely be in prison considering how many people go to jail for this.

Hate crime laws were created to stop persecution of minority cultures, but since the government doesn't know whether you beat up your black neighbor because he is black or because he's an asshole you will usually be charged with a hate crime.

Hate crime laws are unfair, as the majority of crimes committed against another race are not racially charged at all.

Hate crime laws are just a way to show favoritism to a certain group of people and/or restrict your freedoms pure and simple.

It's Not just about kin color or gender anymore. That door swings both ways and now includes homosexuals, whether they are in dresses or even using the women's dressing rooms.

In theory, in the realm of pure logic with no reference to social realities, everything you write is 100% correct.

What you're leaving out, however, is the social reality that in the absence of hate crimes laws, many people in the USA are NOT treated equally, and don't actually enjoy equal freedoms. Nor, traditionally, have their lives been deemed of equal worth under the law.

For hundreds of years, for example, white judges and white juries generally paid little heed to crimes committed against black people, especially when the crimes were committed by whites.

In many parts of the US even today, law enforcement officers and judges and juries also really don't treat the lives of gay men and lesbians as being of equal worth with the lives of heterosexuals.

Hate crime laws are mostly designed to provide equal protection for the rights of unpopular and often persecuted minorities - e.g. African Americans, gay people, and probably Jews, in some parts of the country.

No human institution works perfectly, and no doubt there are problems with how hate crimes are handled by the judicial system. Maybe in some places there is discrimination against straight white victims of crime, although I haven't noticed this here in black-majority Washington DC.

But the intent of the hate crimes laws is really to provide equal protection, in situations where it hasn't been provided before. Mostly because of "hate" = popular prejudices.

Your quote from Noyes is beautiful, inspiring, all that -- but what does it do to protect innocent African American men & women from the threat of a renewal in Klan-style terrorism? What does it do to protect a lone lesbian or a gay man from having his/her rights brutally violated in some isolated corner of Nebraska or Wyoming?

For that matter, could there possibly be a few instances in which "hate crimes" laws should be invoked to protect the equal rights of isolated whites in nonwhite neighborhoods?

Regardless of the formal logic used, and regardless of the rhetoric employed, I think laws against "hate crimes" are really just laws designed to protect the constitutional rights of minorities. As such, they're probably mostly a good thing.

If we get to the point where cops, juries and judges are just as zealous in defending the rights and the lives of minorities as in defending the rights of everyone else, then maybe such laws will need to be repealed. But for now, they serve an important purpose.

I’m interior the united kingdom and that's our goverment's data & figures on Hate Crimes. Nationally, the police recorded 50,000 racially or religiously stimulated hate crimes final year. The British Crime Survey, that's in line with interviews with a great pattern of persons and thoughts up crimes that are no longer reported to police, indicated that there have been 260,000 such offences final year. The Metropolitan Police on my own reported 11,799 incidents of racist and non secular hate crime and a million,359 incidents of homophobic hate crime interior the twelve months to January 2006. even with the shown fact that, the police estimate that maximum racist and non secular hate crime, and as much as ninety% of homophobic crime, is going unreported (source: Hate Crime: turning in a high quality provider) because of the fact victims are too apprehensive or embarrassed to enable somebody comprehend. the common hate criminal is a youthful white male (maximum homophobic offenders are elderly sixteen-20, and maximum race hate offenders under 30) who lives domestically to the sufferer. maximum folk of hate crimes take place on the threshold of the sufferer's homestead whilst they are going approximately their on a regular basis company, and an offence is maximum in all probability to be dedicated between 3pm and middle of the night.

As you pointed-out ALL "hate-crime" laws are predicted on two things:

> That certain THOUGHTS are in themselves criminal.

> That we all MUST be divided into separate and UNEQUAL legal classes.

Obviously, no American can tolerate any such thing - which is of course why all Democrats demand it.

If someone commits murder, assault etc why should their motivation determine what the penalty is? The victim is just as dead or injured no matter why it was done.

I don't even know where to start with this.

Yes, in most cases, investigators can determine if it is a crime committed simply because the victim is a certain race, gender, religious belief, sexual orientation, etc.

Until people start treating each other equally, the government needs to take extra measures in order to protect minorities. The Founding Fathers designed the government so that majority could not overrun minority.