Who here think that hate crimes are bogus?
Okay let me just start off before anyone jumps to any conclusions, that I am not a racist, or anti gay or anti semetic or anything like that, i just have a problem with hate crimes. My main problem is that it is very hypocritical. Civil rights groups always ask for one thing...EQUAL rights. Do you see where I am going with this? It is not equal to punish a man 2x because he is a racist or homophobic or whatever. If a murder is racially motivated, so what? He is still going to get tried for murder. An even bigger tendency is for the minority to lie about the incident. I mean how easy is it to just he beat me up because I was gay/black/mexican. I think if they are found to be lying they should be punished, just like false sexual harassment. Not only is it damaging to a persons reputation, its damaging to the cause itself!
Feel free to challenge me or add to the argument! I realize this isn't the best constructed argument, I just did kind a rough draft, so there are holes in it.
Re: Who here think that hate crimes are bogus?
Quote:
Originally Posted by will641
It is not equal to punish a man 2x because he is a racist or homophobic or whatever. If a murder is racially motivated, so what? He is still going to get tried for murder.
Like euph touched on earlier, one's motive(s) for murder or other crimes is important and should affect their sentencing. A person who commits crimes based on differences of beliefs/race/etc. is obviously a larger threat to society than a person who commits a crime based on something more "understandable" like revenge. Take 2 scenarios:
1) A woman murders a man because she found out that he raped her child.
2) A black man murders a white man because he hates white people.
The racist murderer is obviously more of a threat to society than the "revenge" murderer unless somehow lots and lots of people start raping that woman's child.