Mark Zamen, author

First, I have no problem philosophically or ideologically with hate-crime legislation. I totally agree with everything Stephanie Zvan wrote above.

However, an organization dedicated to supporting LGBT rights (the Sylvia Rivera Law Project) wrote a paper saying that it did not support hate crime laws. The reasons it gave were that hate crime laws are often used to persecute the people who are supposedly being protected by these laws, and that there is little evidence that the laws have any effect on reducing the occurrence of hate-motivated violence. The announcement can be found at http://srlp.org/node/301 . There is a list of references at the bottom of the page.*

I hope this is a little less incoherent than my first comment. I just think that this is a consideration that should be brought up in this discussion.

* For example, from the FBI website on hate crimes :
“18.3 percent [of racially-motivated hate crime victims] were victims of an anti-white bias.” (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/victims.htm)

Another thing to consider: these laws can be used against the very people they are supposed to protect. Before I read the above link, I was very much in support of hate crime legislation, but now I’m not so sure.

Violence motivated by racism or homophobia is despicable, but unfortunately the Law of Unintended Consequences is seemingly the only inescapable one.

If “hate bill”-obsessed Congress can’t protect Christians from “gays” as much as it wants to protect “gays” from Christians, will Congress be surprised if it can’t protect itself from most everyone? If “hate bills” are forced on captive Americans, they’ll still find ways to sneakily continue to “plant” Biblical messages everywhere. By doing so they’ll hasten God’s judgment on their oppressors as revealed in Proverbs 19:1. (See related web items including “David Letterman’s Hate, Etc.,” “Separation of Raunch and State,” “Michael the Narc-Angel,” and “Obama Avoids Bible Verses.”) Since Congress can’t seem to legislate “morality,” it’s making up for it by legislating “immorality”!

Good luck with the tests!

I hear the argument that because blacks and women and GLBT historically didn’t get as much protection as white men, they should now get more.

I do hope that you will recognize that this is not at all what I am personally arguing, nor would I. In fact I argue the point the way I have been, because I can very much see the possibility that, for example, fundamentalist Christians may become a hated minority (to a certain degree, not necessarily a bad thing). I am not arguing for any exceptionalism. I am merely arguing for the recognition that attacking someone because they did something that made you angry, is a different crime than attacking them because they belong to a subpopulation you despise and attacking absolutely anyone who is part of that population would have satisfied your need.

First, I would love to cite cases, but I really don’t have time to look. I am not trying to cop out, but I have one test today and four more this next week, including a final. Then I pick up my kids for a twelve day stint on Friday, with two more finals to go. I made the brilliant decision to pack three academically intensive classes (12 credits) that normally fit sixteen week semesters, into a twelve week for my online psych and eight weeks for cultural anthropology and physical geography. I still have about twelve pages of papers to write as well. I am just a wee bit frazzled at the moment…

Second, I am not trying to argue for the current proposal – I know nothing about it really. I can assure you that if those death penalty provisions are part of the package, I will be writing my congresscritters to strenuously object to it’s passage. I am no different than you, in that I do not support laws that are unlikely to make people safer and have objected to the death penalty most of my life. I don’t believe it is worth the risk of ever executing someone who did not actually commit the crime. I have seen plenty of evidence that it is absolutely not a deterrent. There is no excuse, given either of those factors and when put together they inexorably damn the whole notion.

Finally, I would ask you one last question. Not assuming that the definition would be expanded to include the crimes we’re talking about here, would you support the recognition and additional punishment of terrorist acts? For example, crimes which were anonymously claimed to be terrorist acts and for which the perpetrators were captured and prosecuted. Cases where the admitted aim, was to inspire terror? Such as someone who sends out a press-release saying they were doing this to stop further development in a particular area and then blows the hell out of a housing development under construction?

And I am not trying to catch you in some inconsistency. I can totally see someone supporting that and not supporting hate crime laws or the expansion of terrorism to cover them. Personally I would perceive that as inconsistent, but I can see why one would not.

You stil seem to be confusing motive with intent. Whether something was premeditated is about intent, not motivation. Whether someone was criminally insane is not about motive–criminally insane people have many crazy motives, and it doesn’t matter whether you think God or the saucer people told you to do what you did. Crimes of desperation are also tricky–we don’t send people to prison for stealing bread anymore, but that’s because the problem for the poor in the US is malnutrition, not starvation. So a desperation defense would not get anyone very far under most circumstances.

The reason a criminal act was premeditated is where motive comes in. In theory, before hate crimes, the law treated everyone equally by focusing on deeds. It didn’t, of course, because rich people get all kinds of favoritism, but that was the theory. Hate crime laws changed the theory.

It should make no difference why a person is attacked. What matters is the attack, and in an egalitarian system, every person has equal worth. I hear the argument that because blacks and women and GLBT historically didn’t get as much protection as white men, they should now get more. But that just keeps the cycle of exceptionalism going. The simpler solution is to say we’ll finally enforce the same laws for everyone.

We’re probably at philosophical deadend now, so I’ll drop out of the discussion. But if you can cite any cases where motive was a significant factor or point to any evidence that hate crimes have made anyone safer, I’ll be grateful.

A PS: The provision may have been dropped, but part of the current Hate Crimes proposal included expanding the death penalty–another thing that has never been shown to be a deterrent. I generally like laws that make people safer, and I don’t like laws that don’t.