Hate Crimes Legislation

As always, there are two sides to any debate. More from the other side that someone sent me today:

Religious Freedom Threatened by H.R. Bill 1913

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Gohmert is here speaking on HR 1592, which is, I believe, an 2007 version of a similar bill passed in the House. See relevant conservative text on that here.

http://www.maplight.org/map/us/bill/...ult/links.html

It boggles my mind - this legislation - because its overly broad and at base, and will be used to target Christianity in any shape form or size. Further, it derogates the constitutional protection of religious freedom.

Easy example: I dont get to call everyone here who openly disagrees with President Obama's policies and administration a racist. Granted, he's black. Granted, some people who disagree with his policies might really be racist. Granted some people who disagree with his policies very strongly might discuss their disagreement of those policies with someone else who is an extreme racist - and that someone else may even attack blacks on their own time.

Does the conversation alone make the person who disagrees with the Obama Administration a racist? Cmon. If that's the case, we'd have to define all TV & Radio pundits as committing Hate Crimes, because we cant even begin to scratch the surface of the people who listen to them, believe/internalize what they say, and also commit criminal behavior.

Next rung down this horrible ladder of a slippery slope is that they are going to define Christianity as a cult, in order to remove it from the religious protection granted by the constitution.

And on a final note - have we even touched on Freedom of Speech? People often openly and very strongly discuss being "politically correct" and that they will not be. Isnt it wonderful that they actually have a choice in the matter? Its not like they have the choice to

(a) be PC, or

(b) go to jail for a Hate Crime.

Go ahead. Laugh. But I am deadly serious. This subject irritates me because you know what? Racists have a choice - even though there are more racially motivated hate crimes than homosexually motivated hate crimes. Sexists have a choice, even though there are a whole LOT more heterosexual gender motivated hate crimes than homosexually motivated hate crimes.

A bill like this will not give Christians that choice. This is essentially saying they will be PC or go to jail for a hate crime. So I ask you - why is it that Christianity alone occupies that special pedestal of demonized existence within the US? I'll tell you why. Its because homosexuality alone crosses race and gender and touches - hurts! - that majority segment of American society who most occupies the halls of justice (...erm, Congress/legislative arm). Apparently, when something like dislike or disagreement or....minority status.......touches "them" its really, really bad. And I find elevating disagreement with LGBT issues to a crime beyond even racism or sexism to be nothing more than a majority way to yet again specially protect themselves ....and well.....racist and kind of sexist too, because I strongly believe that congress is made up of more men than women - and if there were more open lesbianism than gay men, this issue wouldnt have even been allowed to run up the flagpole.

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something witty goes here......

I find it hard to have sympathy for the so called persecution of Christians. I live surrounded by close minded conservative Christians who would take away any gay rights that the movement has already gained and those of others.

The gay rights movement which should have not been necessary because those rights should have been available all along has made some wonderful progress lately. Whenever the movement makes progress people feel threatened and a need to do something to lash back. It's just sad.

Mack, I'd like to understand what you mean by the following:

"And I find elevating disagreement with LGBT issues to a crime beyond even racism or sexism to be nothing more than a majority way to yet again specially protect themselves ....and well.....racist and kind of sexist too, because I strongly believe that congress is made up of more men than women - and if there were more open lesbianism than gay men, this issue wouldnt have even been allowed to run up the flagpole."

Could you please explain a bit more what you mean?

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Bleacheddecay

Paranoid hogwash, as usual.

"LLEHCPA holds any person who 'willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of any person' is guilty of a hate crime'."

"Translation - you have to commit an act of violence against an individual before you can be charged with a crime. There is no thought police. No Big Brother boogeyman. Thus, unless Lafferty has acquired the talents of Ghost Whisperer, she is howling at the moon."

"Furthermore, LLEHCPA also reads, 'In a prosecution for an offense under this section, evidence of expression or associations of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial ... .' The First Amendment is covered." http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_hat12.htm



Incidentally, even Croatia has enacted anti-hate crimes legislation and no one has gone apeshit about it.

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http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

Eh? How is that even remotely a rebuttal of what was said? The fact that you have to commit a crime isn't in dispute, and putting it in bold doesn't address the core concern: the idea that the exact same crime committed against one person is deemed somehow worse than when it's committed against another. That's a reasonable concern, and one that is most definitely not limited to Christians, conservatives, or any other releated group. Most serious Libertarians have major concerns about this, too, because it imposes harsher punishments for identical crimes based only on whether or not the victim falls into some predefined group.

If you support hate crimes legislation, hey, fine, let's talk about it. But completely ignoring the arguments against it and brushing it off as "paranoid hogwash" just won't do.

Err, I must still be a little groggy because I don't see anything even remotely resembling what you've said in mack's post. What I did read is her focus on homophobia being included in the hate crimes legislation and being somehow elevated beyond racism? I'm reading the act now and see nothing of the sort.

Maybe I'm just stupid, can someone explain it to me like I'm a 4 year old. How does hate crime legislation lead to the criminalization of Christianity? And what was all that about Christians not having a choice as opposed to racists...?

Incidentally, my impression was that she wouldn't have such a problem (or maybe a problem at all) with hate crime legislation if it didn't include discrimination based on sexual orientation.

As for your post (which again, I fail to see the connection with mack's ramblings), I believe the prominent reason for hate crime legislation is that such crimes affect not only the victim and their families, but also other members of the said class of people (be they homosexuals, black people or any other minority which is subject to discrimination), which is why they're considered more disruptive to society than regular crimes which aren't motivated by bias. :\

Perhaps I'm confused, but I think she's basically saying that hate crimes are a form of thought control (not a terribly hard case to make, really), and therefore threaten everyone, in the same way tossing an innocent man in jail "harms" you, even if you have no connection to him. It might sound a little silly to single out Christianity, but the broader point -- if not the specific rhetoric -- is about hate crimes themselves.

If you're taking issue only with some of the rhetoric surrounding it, I suppose I wouldn't put up a lot of fuss. What stood out to me was the text you bolded in your response, which I took to be an implication that hate crimes need not concern anyone who isn't planning on commiting and act of violence.

I understand that this is the argument for it, and at first glance it's not unreasonable...but I think, upon further examination, it's a fairly meaningless distinction. I'm sure that, if an openly gay man, for example, is beaten merely for being gay, other gay men in the area will be fearful that it may happen to them. But if any crime is committed in an area, that area's inhabitants will worry more. If someone robs my neighbor, I'm going to be concerned for myself.

In other words, I don't think we can parse fear out and deem that some types of it are worse than others, and punish more accordingly. I think the entire concept is, at best, a well-meaning by completely futile attempt to snuff out hate, and at worst, an attempt to force people to think a certain way through brute force.

Um, I may be wrong, but again, I don't think she was referring to hate crime legislation in general, but a specific bill which expands the hate crime legislation to include crimes towards homosexuals (I'm not very familiar with American law, but I read a bit about hate crime legislation and it appears it has covered race and gender for a few decades now).

Actually, that was what I was trying to say. Why do other people need to worry about it? Honest question.

Hmm, I disagree. Unlike random crimes, hate crimes send a message of intolerance towards a certain, defined group of people, plus they affect the perception of safety on a much bigger scale than random crimes. A bashing based on bias in any part of the country affects members of the targeted group of people regardless of whether the crime happened in their area. I won't be as threatened by a random mugging as with a gay bashing because one is specifically directed at a group of people which I belong to, the other isn't so there's much less chance I'll become the victim. Regardless of that, there is nothing personal about random acts of violence so the emotional impact isn't the same as with a hate crime. I've read somewhere that hate crime victims feel similarly violated to rape victims.


On the other hand, the general population isn't (as) worried about gay bashing (or crimes based on race) because they aren't members of the said group of people. This is why I think there's a need for hate crime legislation, not only to alert other people to the problems of homophobia, racism etc., but to send a strong message that such intolerance will not be tolerated. Haha...yeah, you get my meaning...:\

Btw, this should all be separated and moved into a separate thread.

Empathy does exist, certainly for family members. My daughter is so in my case at least you are wrong. I actually think it bothers me more than it does her for that matter.

I was referring to people who don't have any relations with gay people...it goes without saying that family members of the victims will be affected by hate crimes...

I couldn't speak for mack, but I thought she was referring to it in general. Dunno for sure, though.

I think everyone needs to worry about the relative justness or unjustness of any law. Just because I don't plan on suing anyone doesn't mean I don't want a fair legal system in place. I think wanting the law to be as fair as possible should be a built-in desire even for upstanding people. Heck, I'd say it's one of the things that makes them upstanding people to begin with.

I do get your meaning and it makes sense, but I do think there are some issues with scope. For example, couldn't this apply to any minority group? The much-discussed "Craigslist killer" seems to have targetted masseuses, and therefore could arguably have had the same effect on local masseuse as a "hate crime" would on members of the minority in question. Why punish that any differently? Same effect.

By the by, not that the phrasing is that important, but the phrase "hate crime" isn't doing its supporters any favors. Given the arguments that defend it, it sounds like "fear crime" fits a bit better. But as indicated above, there are lots of ways criminals can strike fear into small groups of people.

I think you're probably right 'bout that. I'll see if I can rustle up a new one.

I believe the hate crime legislation is meant to protect groups that have suffered a long history of hate and discrimination. Hence what I said earlier about the main intent of the legislation, which is ending such discrimination. Yes, local masseuses, possibly. That was an isolated case, hate crimes aren't...Unless there's a burgeoning subculture of masseuse-haters out there, I wouldn't say it's the same thing. :\

But surely you see the problem here: it's being applied to specific crimes, but is altering standard punishments for some vague attempt at broader social change. They're making an example out of people, in other words. Using brute legal force to try to affect people's thinking.

You can't actually measure fear, though. Some local masseueses were probably terrified. Others, not so much. The same spectrum of emotion probably applies to any group that feels targetted, which is just another reason hate crimes legislation is so dubious. It's trying to measure the immeasurable and drawing a largely arbitrary line as to which groups even qualify, and all for some unquantifiable social benefit.

Whatever you feel about it on a personal level, surely you see how incredibly shaky the legal ground is here: they're telling us it's worse to kill someone who's gay than someone who's, say, blonde.

Two more things to consider: first, whatever the abstract merits of hate crimes laws, they have to exist in the real world, which means judges and juries making all sorts of arbitrary value judgments even on top of the ones inherent in the idea. It's especially subjective, and therefore ripe for abuse.

Second, these laws clearly breed resentment for some, in the same way racial quotas and the like sometimes breed racial resentment. When people feel they're being forced to think a certain way, they're as likely as not to reinforce their thinking. So it's entirely possible that, even if we ignore the legal and moral hurdles here, it might be counterproductive anyway.

Don't blow a gasket, Mack. Even if the legislation is overly broad as you claim, there is no guarantee (or as far as I can see, even the slightest threat) that it "will be used to target Christianity." That's just your personal interpretation of it. Hate crimes law has not prevented membership in or public marches by the Ku Klux Klan because membership in the Klan and assemblies by the Klan is not against the law, as long as they get the proper parade permit which is also required of the NAACP. Show me anywhere in this country where it's against the law to be a member of any church or for any religious group to assemble, and then I'll start to worry with you.

Why, what's to stop you? It's not against the law to say someone is racist or bigoted or has stinky feet. But if you do it in public, the person you're calling names has the right under civil law to sue you in civil court for defamation (if you say it) or libel (if you write it). But it's not a crime and is not punishable under criminal law and therefore is not subject to hate crime laws. Now if you say, "Those people have stinky feet--let's go kill 'em," then you have broken criminal laws by inciting a riot, advocating an attack on or murder of people simply because their feet stink (or they're black or Jewish, or homosexual, or whatever).

So your pastor (or rabbi or even Klan Wizard) can safely say, "It says right here in verse whatever that God is against homosexuality." You can quote God or Hitler or Gomer Pyle. Just so long as you don't say, "God is against homosexuals, so let's go get 'em." It's the "let's go get 'em" that will have your parson up on criminal charges, just as if he had said, "Following today's service, I expect the congregation to form a car pool and go bomb a birth-control clinic." It's the advocation of a crime that will put your butt behind bars--and rightfully so.

Now you're really streaching on this one, Mack. They don't even define cults as cults. Tell me a single religion or cult that has been outlawed.

I'll just refer you to the famous Supreme Court decision to the effect that "Freedom of speech does not give you the right to shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater." Saying or writing something with even the intent to provoke attacks or otherwise encourage or cause bodily harm to anyone is against the law and subject to additional penalties if the intended victims are members of designated minorities.

I'm with you on this one, adid--the lynching of a black man or a Jew or a homosexual is not just an attack on that individual but an act aimed at intimidating any and all people who happen to be black or Jewish or homosexual. Such attacks aren't like most criminal acts aimed at robbery or killing in passion or for profit or burglary or drug running or any mundane random crime. The whole idea behind such an attack is solely that the individual is a member of a specific group hated by the attacker(s).

With all due respect, Yoda, that is a gross over-simplification of hate crime laws. No one is trying to control your thoughts, because simply thinking something is not criminal. There are laws against robbery, but in my mind I can plan the world's greatest heist. There are laws against murder, but I can picture in my mind slowing killing my ex-wife's boyfriend (which in my case would be mass murder). There are laws against incest, but I can imagine lewd acts with my sister (if I had one). There are laws against criminal actions against minorities simply because they are minorities, but I can think to myself all Star Wars fans are less than human and should be stamped out as soon as possible (I don't really think that, of course).

Simply thinking such things hurts nobody but my own sick mind and personality, but no one can know or, more important, prove what is going on in my imagination. It's only when one goes beyond thinking about evil and actually commits the evil acts he's been fantasizing that one breaks the law and is rightfully subject to punishment.

There's a big difference between using the N-word among your friends, making jokes about blacks and insulting them in public compared with going out and lynching a person just because he's black. It's the actual attack on the black man, just because he's a member of a group that one hates and wants to intimidate, that makes it a hate crime.

Yeah, if someone robs your neighbor, you might be worried about being robbed. But you're not worried about being robbed just because you were the neighbor of the first victim. In reality, although your neighborhood may be a crime area, it would take a very dumb criminal to burgularize the house at 101 the first night, then break into 103 the next night, come back to burgle 105 the third night, and so on down the block. By the time he got to 107, the cops surely would be lying in wait for him. Point being, you're actually in less danger of being burglarized after your neighbor has been burglarized.

On the other hand, if someone starts gunning down black people night after night after night, then all black people can safely assume any one of them could potentially be the next victim. That's not a truly random crime like burglary; that is a crime specifically aimed at a certain group and certainly qualifies as a hate crime because the shootings are intended to frighten and intimidate all blacks in that town. That puts the racial killer above and beyond the wife who knifes her cheating husband or the hyped-up teen who shoots and kills the Stop-N-Go clerk in a bungled robbery. The wife is revenging herself against a specific husband, the teen has killed the clerk while trying to get money for his next fix. The wife was not trying to intimidate all cheating husbands; she didn't necessarily hate all husbands--likely she'll remarry if acquited. The teen wasn't interested in killing that or any other store clerks--he just wanted a fix. But the hate killer is targeting a special group based solely on his hate for that group and therefore is a threat to all members of that group. And this ol' white, Protestant-raised, native Southern boy thinks people who commit hate crimes deserve extra punishment.

Besides, it not a bit different than the RICO laws that provide extra-tough sentences on members of organized crime vs. an individual hop-head burglarizing neighborhood houses or sticking up 7-11s.

Not yet at least.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Because knowing exactly what you're thinking is, at the moment, impossible, but this inability in no way implies that there is no attempt to do so.

When the law tries to punish someone for having one thought as opposed to another in any form, that is undeniably an attempt at thought control. The fact that no one is capable of policing actual thoughts is beside the point. Whether or not it works is beside the point. The point is the attempt to influence thinking through imposing special penalties for certain types of thoughts, and hate crimes legislation quite obviously qualifies.

This only means that hate crimes legislation involves retroactive thought control, though. It punishes you for the thoughts you had that led to the crime, on top of the crime itself.

What if the robbers are drug addicts? Junkies are not half as logical as you or I might be about where and when to rob. Not to mention that any legal principle reliant on criminals doing things that makes sense strikes me as fairly shaky.

But aside from all that, simply swap out this hypothetical neighborhood for any random demographic group. There are millions of sub-sets in society, and the overwhelming majority do not even merit a mention under proposed hate crimes laws.

Whether or not it's logical to feel fear isn't the point. The point is that fear is still felt, and that the fear created in a group is one of the primary arguments among hate crimes legislation proponents.

That's like saying narcotic laws are aimed at altering people's thinking about smoking hash or popping pills. Or that the extra "aggravated" rating on crimes involving guns is aimed at discouraging criminals from thinking about sticking a gun in your ribs. Or that the capital punishment provision is aimed at discouraging people from even thinking about killing a cop. You're free to think whatever you want; just don't do it if there's a law against it.


We also have laws and sentencing rules that tell us you're more likely to get capital punishment if you kill someone in the commission of another crime. Judges and juries also are likely to come down harder on someone for killing a child than for killing an adult.

That's the whole point of the jury system, Yoda. A jury of your peers from your community decide on their personal evaluation of the evidence and the general moral standards of your community whether a crime has been committed, whether the defendent committed the crime, and, in the punishment phase, whether the defendent is likely to commit similar crimes in the future. Our whole system is based upon the collective judgment of jurors, with all the faults and benefits that entails.


Yeah, like Gore's supporters resented election laws and most of us resent income tax regulations. If we start throwing out laws because someone (usually the worse offenders) resent those laws, then we'll soon be back to the law of the jungle.

[quote=Yoda;534809]This only means that hate crimes legislation involves retroactive thought control, though. It punishes you for the thoughts you had that led to the crime, on top of the crime itself.[/quote0

"Retroactive thought control" is a misnomer. No matter what some may wish now or the future may hold (I'll worry about the future when it gets here), thoughts cannot be controlled--past, present, or future. Our court system cannot "control" what has already happened, be it in one's mind or one's actions; it can only punish the crime committed; and it's the motivation of a hate crime, not the mere thought of it, that opens the crime to additional punishment. The defendent can claim that all 10 people he killed with a sniper rifle over the past 14 months just happened to be black or just happened to be homosexual or just happened to be Jewish, but most jurors are going to believe the prosecutor's claim that the defendant only killed those people because they all belonged to a group the defendant hated. The defendent still has to provide some proof in support of that motive--like hate letters written, hate literature collected, hate comments made to coworkers, previous history of attacks on members of that group. It's not an open and shut case as you imply.


Yoda, I've covered hundreds of crimes and criminal trials in small towns, middle-size towns, large cities and their counties, and never in all those years have I ever encountered a case where specific mixed neighborhoods were targeted for repetitive crimes out of hate for that whole neighborhood or for a crime aimed at intimidating the entire neighborhood in hopes of making them go away. (In fact, if you're burgled, there's a better than even chance that the burgular is a neighbor--especially if young and on drugs.)

On the other hand, I have seen many, many cases of criminals that targeted certain groups out of hate for that specific group. The whole concept of hate crimes is that all members of a specific group are potential targets of that crime, which has been proven again and again by the facts of the cases.

You're welcome to your opinion, of course. But mine is based on observed facts, not imaginative theories.

I don't think it's like that at all -- all the things you're describing are still based on the actions of the criminal, not their thought process. There's no extra punishment for what you were thinking before you used narcotics, just for using them.

Any time you punish something, you're obviously discouraging that thing. The laws you mention above discourage a specific action by punishing that action. Similarly, hate crimes laws punish the person for their action and their thought process, and thus are trying to discourage both.

But there's no law mandating that they must. Murder is murder, legally speaking, as it should be. We don't need special children-hating legislation to aid us in punishing people who kill children as opposed to adults.

I'd also argue that there's a meaningful difference between killing a child and killing an adult. Aside from the obvious fact that the distinction is not nearly as arbitrary, they're also two different people; with hate crimes legislation, you can kill the exact same person for two different reasons and receive two different sentences.

The fact that subjectivity is present in our system doesn't mean introducing more of it is a good thing. Subjectivity is inevitable, of course, but you'll notice we compensate for this heavily with copious numbers of guidelines and procedures to mitigate these elements and try to steer the system towards objectivity when possible.

So, I'm not saying any system which contains subjectivity is worthless, I'm saying that introducing more of it carries with it more problems. The more flexible and nebulous a law or process, the more easily it can be abused, and there are few things more nebulous than how we think. Thus, charging people with figuring out what someone thought is more prone to error than figuring out what they did.

Sure, but I didn't advocate "throwing out" any laws because someone will resent them. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, either, because income tax laws are not about getting people to act chummy, but about simply collecting money. And at that, they succeed (and how).

Hate crimes laws, on the other hand, clearly exist to discourage the hatred that they punish (hence the punishment), which means any resentment they might breed is directly relevant to whether or not they can achieve their goals.