good idea?

[luke warm]

The House voted Thursday to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation, a step that would extend new protection to lesbian, gay and transgender people.

 

[...]

 

Under current federal law, hate crimes that fall under federal jurisdiction are defined as those motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion or national origin.

The new measure would broaden the definition to include those committed because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It was approved by the House right before a weekend when gay rights will be a focus in Washington, with a march to the Capitol and a speech by President Obama to the Human Rights Campaign.

from the nyt

 

btw, this was attached to a bill "which authorizes military pay, weapons programs and other necessities for the armed forces"

[Lobowolf]

Not a big fan of the whole "hate crime" deal. I can see a couple of reasonable rationales, but ultimately, they don't persuade me. I think that violent crime should be proscribed just as vehemently when not motivated by demographic animus.

[hotShot]

What else but the motivation makes the difference between killing a human being to get his property and killing a human being to defend your country?

 

Why does the law treat these separately:

intentional killing

unintentional killing

accidental killing

 

I think that is about motivation too.

So i guess the purpose of the "hate crime" definition to make clear how this kind of motivations should be evaluated.

[Lobowolf]

Why does the law treat these separately:

intentional killing

unintentional killing

accidental killing

 

It's "about" motivation, but I don't think it works as an analogy; I think it's more reasonable to treat "lack of intent" vs. "intent" differently than it is to distinguish between different intents.

[barmar]

Laws are a codification of ethics. The purpose of hate crime laws is to send a message about tolerance.

[kenberg]

As a first approximation, I think I should be allowed to hate anyone I wish to hate, I don't think I should be allowed to kill anyone I wish to kill. Some peop

 

Some people on this forum have expressed strong feelings about, for example, Sarah Palin. Perhaps they even hate her. They are allowed to, and they don't need to explain it to the police. They can't shoot her.

 

I'm with lobo on this. I do see some merit in the arguments supporting hate crime laws but on balance I think increasing the penalty for a crime based on stupid tings the person may have said or written is a bad idea.

 

Now as to specifically the issue of extending hate crime legislation to hatred of homosexuals it seems that if you are going to have hate crime legislation at all it may as well include hatred of homosexuals. And hatred of Sara Palin, for that matter.

 

One guy shoots people for the fun of it, the other because of hatred, I dunno, in some ways I think that the first guy is worse but I favor having equal punishment for both.

[cherdanno]

If I had to make a rationale for hate-crime laws, it would go s.th. like this:

If you commit a violent crime, you are punished for the injuries and pain you caused your victim. But a crime against, say, someone of a minority race, that is motivated by racism and intended to scare other people of the same race has more victims - anyone of that race who now lives in fear. So you intentionally cause more harm, and so a bigger punishment makes sense, too.

[kenberg]

The above rationale has merit. As i say, on balance I don't go for it but I can see sme reasons behind hate laws.

 

I think I would prefer something where greater punishment would be leveled against a person if he belonged to a group that clearly was devoted to violence. The mafia uses violence to intimidate and make a profit, a white supremacist group might use violence to intimidate and express their hatred. Membership in a violent organization is an action and carrying out their violence is an action. So the law would punish action, not opinions. Society has a legitimate interest in dealing with groups devoted to violence as well as individuals engaged in violence.

 

My life has been so free of violence and hatred that I feel I have to consider the possibility that I don't really know what i am talking about. But hate crime laws seem to really be about getting people to keep some of their opinions to themselves. I think that the way to change views is by first allowing people to air thise views.

[Lobowolf]

If I had to make a rationale for hate-crime laws, it would go s.th. like this:

If you commit a violent crime, you are punished for the injuries and pain you caused your victim. But a crime against, say, someone of a minority race, that is motivated by racism and intended to scare other people of the same race has more victims - anyone of that race who now lives in fear. So you intentionally cause more harm, and so a bigger punishment makes sense, too.

This is one of those reasonable rationales I meant.

 

The other is this: I think it's reasonable to believe there's a higher potential for recidivism for bona fide hate crime activities. May not be true, but if I had to guess, I'd think so. "Anger management" is probably easier to accomplish when it's not accompanied by that inherent hatred.

 

But when I think of the more notorious "hate crimes," like Matthew Shepard, who was totured, tied to a fence with skull factures and brain damage, and left to die; or James Byrd, who was beaten unconconscious and dragged from a pickup truck by his neck, as horrifying as these cases are, there's still a big problem to me in singling them out and calling them hate crimes.

 

And the problem is this - when you designate something as a "hate crime," you're invoking stronger punishment via sentencing enhancements, or federal laws that now apply to what would have been a "regular" state law crime. You're treating it "more seriously" than otherwise, in effect. And that means, by definition, you're treating the exact same act, minus the "hate crime" motivation, less seriously. You're saying that if Matthew Shepard had been a straight guy who was robbed, pistol-whipped, and left to die with multiple skull fractures, or if other black guys has tortured and killed James Byrd, somehow, it wouldn't have been that bad. We can take a little off the top of our societal disapproval of dragging an unconscious person from a truck by the neck until he's dead (and then dragging him some more). And even though I see a couple of reasonable rationales for that argument, I can't get on board with it.

[jdonn]

And the problem is this - when you designate something as a "hate crime," you're invoking stronger punishment via sentencing enhancements, or federal laws that now apply to what would have been a "regular" state law crime.  You're treating it "more seriously" than otherwise, in effect.  And that means, by definition, you're treating the exact same act, minus the "hate crime" motivation, less seriously.  You're saying that if Matthew Shepard had been a straight guy who was robbed, pistol-whipped, and left to die with multiple skull fractures, or if other black guys has tortured and killed James Byrd, somehow, it wouldn't have been that bad.  We can take a little off the top of our societal disapproval of dragging an unconscious person from a truck by the neck until he's dead (and then dragging him some more).  And even though I see a couple of reasonable rationales for that argument, I can't get on board with it.

I disagree with this entire paragraph pretty much. Designating some crimes as hate crimes and giving them harsher punishments does NOT mean you are treating the same act without the 'hate' less seriously. It only means that in relative terms, but not absolute terms, and that's all that should matter here. I mean it's not like our goal is to rank crimes from best to worst, it's to give the appropriate treatment to each crime individually.

[ArtK78]

I have never been a "fan" of hate crimes bills. They make everyone feel like they are doing something about the problem of racial hatred, or religious hatred, or sexual hatred, but the net result is just to make certain crimes aimed at particular classes of people a double crime rather than a single crime. As if murder wasn't serious enough.

[jdonn]

As if murder wasn't serious enough.

I strongly argue that, it's not! Cherdanno nailed it. Murder damages one person, and those close to them. Murder for discriminatory reasons damages one person, and those close to them, AND the millions who are like them.

[Lobowolf]

Designating some crimes as hate crimes and giving them harsher punishments does NOT mean you are treating the same act without the 'hate' less seriously. It only means that in relative terms, but not absolute terms

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

 

 

 

I mean it's not like our goal is to rank crimes from best to worst, it's to give the appropriate treatment to each crime individually.

 

I agree with this. I just think that the appropriate treatment for beating someone to death because he's gay is the same as the appropriate treatment for beating someone to death in general.

[jdonn]

Designating some crimes as hate crimes and giving them harsher punishments does NOT mean you are treating the same act without the 'hate' less seriously. It only means that in relative terms, but not absolute terms

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Let's say we agree the appropriate punishment for murdering someone at random is 50 years in prison.

 

If I believe the appropriate punishment for murdering someone because they are gay is 75 years in prison, that doesn't mean I consider random murders less important than if I believed gay murder deserved 50 years in prison. You can measure how I feel about random murders by the 50 years, which remained unchanged. You seem to be arguing that since 75 > 50, I now consider random murders less important than before. No, I consider them less important than certain other murders, but exactly as important as I believed they were before.

 

It's kind of funny, you didn't know what I meant by one thing then agreed on the next thing. But I meant the exact same thing by both.

[kenberg]

I have thought a bit about how hate crime designation would be most likely to affect me. I don't hate anyone and at age 70 i would think my assaulting anyone would be almost suicidally stupid. So if the issue comes up with me, I will be in the victim's role. Suppose, for the moment, we get some protection for old people on this. If I am assaulted by a young person, I cou;d hire a private detective to examine his background to see if he has ever said anything hateful about old people. Or, not expecting protection for my age, perhaps my assailant is black. Again we can go through his background to see what he has said about white people. God help him if he has expressed the view that white people are the cause of all the misery in the world and should be eliminated. Maybe he said this in a bar after five drinks, but he is in deep *****.

 

To my mind there is a critical distinction between stupid things one might have said and violent acts one might carry out. I favor keeping that distinction.

[phil_20686]

There are 3 big reasons not to have hate crime legislation

 

1) There is real difficultly in discovering intent. Even in the cases where groups beat a man to death because he was gay/straight/christian/whatever, how do you konw that they all thoguht like that. Maybe one of them was just so terrified of the others that he felt he couldnt say no. Maybe the gang had ringleaders and they threatened one members kid brother. Surely this should be a mitigating factor. But then everyone could say it. Life is complicated, when an action has been taken there is hard evidence, but there can be no evidence for thought.

 

2) There is a real reductio ad absurdity possible here. After all, if crime = bad, and hate + same crime = worse, surely hate = bad? Why not just through all those haters in jail? However life is not that simple. While i hope we can all agree that a world without real hatred would be a better place, many people develop hatreds as a way of dealing with extremely traumatic events. Many people develop hatreds because that was the only way of thinking they were exposed to. Often hatred is born of ignorance. Why should a crime born of ignorance, be worse than a crime done in the full knowledge of what you are doing?

 

3) Are we sure its worse to commit a cirime because you hate somoene? If someone kills my wife, and then i kill them in revenge, i did it because I hate them, but does that make it worse? Surely in this case at least it makes it less bad. In such an example i was blinded by my hatred. How much worse if i had just decided in cold blood for no particular reason to kill someone. What about kids who are indoctrinated with a viewpoint. The kids in the hitler youth were brought up that way, when they through rocks at Jews is that made worse because they hated them, or excused by it? Wouldnt it be worse for someone wasn't anti semitic, who just threw rocks because it was fun to hurt people. I think it would be worse.

 

 

FWIW I don't buy the argument that laws are a way of making statements about a soceity's intentions. That hate crime legislation is a way of making a statement about racism etc. Laws are too important for that, they affect real people in real and often unfair ways. If soceity wants to make a statement, do it by making speeches, and talking. If you want to change atttituddes and beleifs, Laws are a terrible idea.

[Lobowolf]

There are 3 big reasons not to have hate crime legislation

 

 

3) Are we sure its worse to commit a cirime because you hate somoene? If someone kills my wife, and then i kill them in revenge, i did it because I hate them

Actually, this example is one that makes hate crime legislation plausibly reasonable. Killing the person who killed your wife wouldn't subject you to hate crime legislation, because it wasn't motivated by animus toward a targeted demographic group. Hatred of individuals doesn't count. So the guy who goes around killing gay people because he hates homosexuality is more likely to kill again than the guy who revenge kills a particular individual, and this distinction could conceivably merit disparate sentencing.

[barmar]

As if murder wasn't serious enough.

I strongly argue that, it's not! Cherdanno nailed it. Murder damages one person, and those close to them. Murder for discriminatory reasons damages one person, and those close to them, AND the millions who are like them.

In addition, hate crimes typically incite others.

 

If someone kills their spouse in a crime of passion, no one views that as a suggestion that they should commit murder. But when someone attacks a homosexual, African-American, or abortion clinic workers, it's viewed as a call to action by others with similar attitudes. They're not just committing the immediate crime, they're also fomenting passion among their whole community.