re: #521 albusteve

there is no “special victim’s status” — that is a strawman.

a hate crime is an elevated status of a crime..therefore a hate crime victim has an elevated status above victim…this is the entire principle…it would then be true to say there is a special victim status…you cannot deny this

The crime has elevated status, not the victim. The government has decided that crimes under this category are especially heinous.

For there to be “special victim status”, all crimes against gay people (or black people, or Sikhs, or Baptists, etc) regardless of circumstances would have “hate crime”status. Obviously, this is not so.