re: #211 Aceofwhat?

Which still has the effect of minimizing the killing of a straight guy for any other reason. The penalties should be stiff enough to cover all motivations. If it was a member of my family, i’d want the stiffest penalty possible and i’d have a real hard time hearing that my family member didn’t belong to a certain group, and as such, isn’t deserving of the most severe prosecution available.

I’m going to share the pro-hate crimes party line on this one. I have to preface it with saying that I’m not totally sold on it yet, but it needs to be shared.

One of the offered justifications for hate crimes law is that the effect - the actual crime is different.
The two scenarios are different: When a white man is attacked and beaten up, the absence of group bias means the crime could have been caused by the “normal” reasons for assault: alcohol, money/robbery, personal beef, etc. When 2 black men are beaten up in a white neighborhood but hood-wearing men, a message is sent (and this is where the word terrorism comes in) that [minority] isn’t welcome or safe. A gay man getting beaten up by a crowd of men screaming “faggot!” doesn’t have the same effect on a community that a non-bias crime does.

(Don’t jump me too much; just sharing the arguments I’ve heard)