[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Otto *
**
I don’t believe that was his assertion.
Yeah, that’s not what I meant, so in retrospect, that’s not what I should have said. I should have said, “I’m extremely upset about Matt’s murder.” In other threads at other times, such a figure of speech might be okay, but not in one as emotionally charged as this one. Words matter. When people read posts in threads like these, they’re looking for every nuance. I shouldn’t have caused the distractions from the point that I did by using careless hyperbole. Sorry about that.
what the fuck, it’s the pit after all…
I have this wonderful revenge fantasy… gangs of gays and lesbians with baseball bats randomly attack “obvious” breeders, really beat the shit out of them. Coincidently, their victims are nice upper middle class conservative white folk who bleat like stuck goats everytime the phrase “hate crime” is mentioned… just for the fun of it we team up with the other unpopular minorities and go on a real fucking rampage… of course, if the fantasy plays out like it does in my mind, the crimes wouldn’t actually be random…
Damn, I am in a pissy mood, aren’t I?
Thankyou for your consideration bagkitty. As a white, middle-class obvious “breeder”, I’ll just step outside and beat myself with a cricket bat for your entertainment (sorry - no baseball bat handy).
I’m sure that this will, indeed, make the world a marginally better place.
pan
Well, in my revenge fantasy, gangs of muscular gay people ogle and grope the lecherous straight guys who hang about on the streets leering at girls and saying “Vous êtes charmante, mademoiselle”…
Hmmmmm, although it will definitely be a more popular one than mine, I’m not quite certain it qualifies as a revenge fantasy. Seems more like a run-of-the-mill wouldn’t it be funny if kinda fantasy. 
Not to start a giant “Hey, everyone, Lib made a mistake! Pile-on in the PIT!!!” kind of thing, Lib, but your statement here has me a bit . . . confused?
If one were to take this statement at its literal meaning, you are then suggesting that people try to read into the statements of others, and in doing so perhaps read what is not necessarily there but what they want to be there. Somewhat akin to saying “I took this statement of yours this way, which justifies me flaming you! DIE, HORSE-FUCKER!!!”.
I submit to you, Libertarian, that it does not take “looking for every nuance” to be put-off (to say nothing of a more emotionally-charged reaction) by the statement “Nobody is more upset than I am by Matt Shepard’s murder.” And I appreciate that you did not mean what this says, but to say that others are reading into it, so to speak, is disingenuous.
FTR, Lib., pldennison called me on a hyperbole about my confidence in God’s and another poster’s confidence in his wife’s love. He was right; I was wrong.
Nobody doubts your sincerity (expecially after the Fred Phelps incident); they just challenged your terminology – something we’ve all done from time to time.
Just as I thought of picking on Sister Coyote for including “navy” in her list of things one cannot choose whether to be – in the absence of a draft, at least! 
Question for all: My distinct impression of state “hate crimes” legislation constitutes demonstrable evident discrimination on the basis of a non-chosen characteristic as an aggravating factor in sentencing. Cannot this whole discussion be defused by noting that aggravating factors are constantly taken into consideration in non-hate-crime incidents, so that the mercy killing of a terminal patient is distinguished from a crime-of-passion killing, and both from a premeditated torture-killing.
And given that, can we return to the OP by observing that the sentence described was far too lenient to ensure that justice was done?
Question for any lawyers perusing this thread: can a sentence, as opposed to verdict, be challenged by prosecutors on similar grounds, absent any formal sentencing guidelines being violated?
Pun, darlin’. I can’t back up any further. I’d have to be a ghost to do that. I changed my words. I explained what I meant. You’ll have to live with that. I don’t think I’m more upset than the parents. I don’t think anybody unfairly read anything into what I said. Okay? Are you appeased yet?
Back on topic… I think I’m coming closer to understanding what some of you are saying about the hate crimes thing. Tell me whether I’ve got this right: A crime motivated by hate is not worse than the identical crime that is motivated by something else; rather, the effects and consequences of a crime motivated by hate are worse than the effects and consequences of a crime motivated by something else. Is that the gist of it? If so, I think I might can at least begin to wrap my mind around that.
Sounds like a reasonable summary to me
It’s okay, Libertarian… you know, in relation to the terrorist attack on New York I often had to stop myself from saying “I love New York as much as the next person”, because even though I’ve been there twenty times and I miss it tremendously, I probably don’t love it as much as my best friend who was born there and lived there all her life does. It’s easy to get a bit carried away when trying to express how strongly one feels about something. One just has to be a bit careful regarding issues about which people are understandably rather sensitive.
I would agree that a crime motivated by hate has far-reaching effects and consequences on the community which perceives itself as having been targeted. It hurts more people than simply the victim and his family and friends. I suppose random crime may have had similar effects in the days when it was not very common. A random murder in a normally quiet and peaceful little village could terrify the inhabitants to the point where some would feel afraid to leave their houses. Hate-related crimes send a similar message to a specific group of people - and that is often the intention of the perpetrator.