Um, no, it’s still intent. If someone is assaulted because of a personal conflict and he happens to be gay, it’s not a hate crime, but if he is assaulted because he is gay, it is. How hard is that to understand?
If he was shot for being a straight white male, it would be a hate crime.
Well then that’s what he gets for using “faggot” as an all-purpose insult.
But then the law would misjudge his intentions. Not using PC speech is not a good enough reason for adding a couple of years to a GBH sentence.
Also, don’t you see how this comment
Is at odds with this one
In the context of my hypothetical?
Only if the defense failed to prove that the insult did not have the intent of saying “I am beating on you because you are gay” but the intent of “I am going to insult you with a generic bad word”. Sort of like beating on someone and calling them a “retarded motherfucker”. You are not necessarily implying that they have some cranial incapacity, nor that they engage in sexual intercourse with a woman who has at least one child. I mean, Hell, I’ve been called “faggot” before. If I were gay, would that mean that the person who called me such knew I was gay? No. The purpose of Hate Crime legislation, or at least one reason, is to defend those people who are victims because of their sexual orientation (real or perceived), race (real or perceived), etc. And in that same sense I believe that if, say, Joe Smith were beaten to death because his murderer believed him gay, but he was not, that is still a hate crime.
And finally, if his defense cannot prove that the guy in your example who killed a gay man was not calling him “faggot” out of knowledge but out of belittlement or such, that’s a tragedy, but not a reason not to have Hate Crime legislation.
How the FUCK did this turn into yet another hate crimes law debate? The fuckers in the OP got a lousy sentence for their horrible actions, and the terrorism against the gay community continues. Want to argue semantics? Go fucking do it somewhere else.
Esprix
It is being decried and legislated against.
No, it’s not just about who you choose as a victim. It’s what your intent for choosing someone as a victim is. If you choose to beat up a gay man simply because he’s there, that’s not a hate crime. If you beat up a gay man with the intentent of punishing him for being gay, that’s a hate crime.
That’s like saying “It’s not true that murder laws help everyone. What if a woman is raped. How do murder laws help her?” And actually, your hypothetical shows how you’re wrong. If someone shoots a man for no particular reason, that’s murder. The most they can get is life imprisonment. If they shoot him because he had a wallet, that’s robbery and murder. In some states, that’s now a capital crime. So if we’re willing to punish people more over things like wallets, shouldn’t we be willing to punish them more for things like hate crimes?
Classes can’t be “more worthy” than another. Only people can. Why are so many people unable to grasp this?
You are mistaken. It refers to the purpose of the act.
No, hate crimes do not say that one group is more worthy than another. I fact, they don’t say anything about groups at all. They only talk about classes.
No one is more upset about Matt Shepherd’s murder than I. I feel rage every time I think about it. Deep, deep, seething rage. In my imperfect morality, I hate the beasts who murdered him, and I especially hate the animals who protested at his funeral. My question is, if I killed any of them, would it be a “hate crime”?
Of course, Lib! You are instilling fear amongst the disaffected “gay-killer” minority. This is, as all know, a well-recognised disenfranchised group that need protecting.
pan
Libertarian, isn’t there a difference between hating someone for his individual acts and hating him because of his membership to a group?
I realise that there is a grey area here. For example, what if a person beats another person up and in his defence claims that it was not because the victim was gay, but because he kissed his boyfriend in public and the defendant believes that such acts are immoral in the same way that Libertarian believes that the act of killing Matthew Shepard was immoral…
But unless we dispute Esprix’s assertion that hate crime laws do not increase penalties for hate crimes, what is the problem here?
I don’t know, Penny. I just really don’t know. I’m searching for a way to keep Joe Anon’s murder as meaningful and significant as Matt Shep’s. The whole thing is too cloudy. Anybody and everybody in some way represents others. I think enforcers ought to have enough intrinsic gumption to prosecute real crime (i.e., coercion) without anyone having to slap them into their senses. The murder in the OP was heinous, but not because the victim was gay. It was heinous because the victim was human.
I can’t imagine that this is completely true. I bet there are still plenty of places in North America where an interracical couple has to worry about this. Particularly black men dating white women in some rural cultures.
Phil is correct. My sister-in-law runs a public school in rural Georgia, and has had to deal with harassment of interracial couples among the students.
Them good ol’ boys don’t like “zebras” too much. :rolleyes:
Libertarian
I bet I can name two, both of whom have the last name “Shepard.” Jackass.
True, Otto, but there’s no need to get stroppy; I think Libertarian has made an valid point. In response to him, I would say that while the killing of Matthew Shepard may not be more significant to his family and friends than the killing of Joe Anon is to his family and friends, it is more significant to the community to which Matthew Shepard belonged, if he was killed for the sole reason that he belonged to that community. (I include anyone who could be mistaken as a member of that community, of course.) I feel as sorry for someone who is killed for his wallet, but the two events have, at the very least, different significance. The one event implies that our society has a problem with poverty, the other that our society has a problem with intolerance.
I wish I had the composure of his precious parents, whose stance on hate crimes is the main reason my mind isn’t made up. I still choke up when I re-read what Dennis Shepard said to the court in November, 1999.
"Matt officially died at 12:53 a.m. on Monday, October 12, 1998, in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. He actually died on the outskirts of Laramie tied to a fence that Wednesday before, when you beat him. You, Mr. McKinney, with your friend Mr. Henderson, killed my son.
By the end of the beating, his body was just trying to survive. You left him out there by himself, but he wasn’t alone. There were his lifelong friends with him—friends that he had grown up with. You’re probably wondering who these friends were. First, he had the beautiful night sky with the same stars and moon that we used to look at through a telescope. Then, he had the daylight and the sun to shine on him one more time—one more cool, wonderful autumn day in Wyoming. His last day alive in Wyoming. His last day alive in the state that he always proudly called home. And through it all he was breathing in for the last time the smell of Wyoming sagebrush and the scent of pine trees from the snowy range. He heard the wind—the ever-present Wyoming wind—for the last time. He had one more friend with him. One he grew to know through his time in Sunday school and as an acolyte at St. Mark’s in Casper as well as through his visits to St. Matthew’s in Laramie. He had God.
I feel better knowing he wasn’t alone."
Beautiful. What a beautiful family. Here is the full text of Mr. Shepard’s remarks. Read it. You’ll find out why they did not seek the death penalty for McKinney, and why Matt was one of the most beautiful people who ever lived.
Okay, so it’s a debate about hate crime legislation. Actually, Esprix, I don’t mind that it has become that; it’s an issue I haven’t thought about enough. And, frankly, I much prefer freewheeling Pit discussions to the form that debates take over in GD; seems more human in here.
I’d like to clarify one point: hate crime legislation is already in place, and has been since 1969. According to religioustolerance.org
The question is, should these laws be expanded to cover homosexuals, and should they apply when people aren’t in school, work, or other federally proteted activities.
The link I posted above is a great resource for an overview of this debate, actually.
I’d like to thank you all for discussing this topic in this context; like I said earlier, it’s something I hadn’t put much thought into, but I can see now that I’ll have to do some more research.
Oh, and pldennison, in reference to this:
My lover is Native American. I’m caucasian. Until you posted, I hadn’t even thought about the possibility that being a mixed homosexual couple might cause additional difficulties. Actually, in a sad sorta way, it’s kind of funny.
Oh, God. I just noticed that I misspelled his name this morning. Fuck me. Damn. Just plain damn.
BTW, Lib, part of the theory behind the hate crimes legislation is that people can’t help being gay/straight/black/white/navy/female/male/butch/femme/whatever or being perceived as such.
OTOH, Mr. Phelps can choose not to be a hatemongering asshole. In theory, anyway.
His point gets lost when it’s coupled with an assertion that he is more outraged by Matthew Shepard’s death than Matthew Shepard’s parents are.
Libertarian, with all due respect, I think you may be incorrect on that one. I do not mean to say that you don’t seethe with barely-bridled anger at the inhuman objects able to commit so vicious and brutal a crime, just that perhaps there are people closer to him who are more upset. There is nothing at all wrong with that. For example, I would wager that the abuse suffered by my father and his siblings is something that upsets and enrages me more than you. And that’s fine. I’d be rather bothered if that weren’t the case.
I know we all commend you for feeling, but there is a line across which one shouldn’t go in saying how deeply one feels, and assuming that you are the mark by which “being upset about Matt Shepard’s murder” is measured . . . perhaps disturbs that line.