spooje, I don’t doubt in the least that people commit heinous crimes without hate for a category of individuals entering into their motives. And heinous, inhuman crimes are generally punished pretty severely. Nevertheless, I see no reason why the existence of such crimes suggests the irrationality of well-crafted hate crimes legislation. In fact, this argument has already been answered by several of us.
You and some others are acting as though sentencing for particular crimes is some kind of hard-and-fast rule. In fact there is a lot of discretion in the matter and the heinousness of a crime, as well as other subjective matters, such as the perpetrator’s seeming contrition, are all factors in sentencing. So we always end up coming back to the same question. What is the harm? If hate crimes legislation sends out a message that society condemns crimes motivated by desire to persecute a particular group, what is the harm? Nowhere does such legislation suggest that society does not condemn heinous crimes committed for any other reason. Nowhere does it mandate that a particularly heinous crime committed, say, by one white male against another shouldn’t be severely punished.
Thanks, NeilXT for your lucid contribution to this thread.
Jackmanni, I think your objection to NeilXT’s argument is faulty. You wrote:
“Secondly, expressing hatred for a protected group is a different matter from being driven to intimidate the entire group. If the latter is what upsets you, you must include “straight white male Protestants” who are intimidated and frightened by street crime in general. Perhaps a detailed interview by trained counselors of every violent crime victim to ferret out whether or not they feel intimidated as a group, with added punishment for the offender as a consequence.”
This logic is backwards. That is, expressing hatred for a group–and NeilXT has already made clear that the best legislation includes any group that might be persecuted as a group–is indeed a way of intimidating the entire group. So, as in NeilXT’s example, if black women starting targeting male WASPS in a public way and perpetrating a series of brutal crimes against them–male WASPs would undoubtedly be intimidated. But that is not to argue that people are only intimidated by the possibility of being victimized by a hate crime.
Naturally, people who live in an area that has seen a rash of rapes, brutal killings, drive-by shootings or what have you will feel unsafe. People who live in such areas will unquestionably want to take action. But how does the existence of hate crimes legislation in away prevent such people from taking action of various kinds to make their neighborhoods safer?
Once again, where is the harm? Except for the argument that hate crimes infringe on free speech–which is, to my mind, a completely invalid argument–I, like NeilXT, have seen no one come up with a compelling reason why there shouldn’t be hate crimes legislation. Maybe, as one or two posters have said, such laws are not effective deterrents. Unquestionably, as someone above said, they are not a replacement for education on the subject. But neither of these constitutes a valid reason against enacting such legislation to provide whatever impact it may.