Hate crimes

I oppose the idea of hate crimes. As a general rule, I don't believe it's necessary or helpful to try to determine someone's thoughts and motives, except as they relate to the crime being accidental vs. intentional.
IMO, the hate (motive) part is irrelevant - it's the crime itself that needs to be punished. People should be punished for their actions - not their thoughts. Otherwise we're heading toward prosecuting "thought crimes," and that's something only tyrants would want.

The punishment should simply be reasonable, based on the seriousness of the crime.

For discussion, let's say some people committed the same crime against different people for different reasons.
The FIRST person did it for fun, not because of hate. Like Charles Manson.
The SECOND person did it because someone paid him to do it. No hate involved.
The THIRD person did it because he hated the victim.

Now - should these criminals all get the same sentence, or different sentences?

You're absolutely correct. Motivation for the crime should play no part in what they are sentenced with. They should be sentenced for the "act'/crime itself. All these hate crime laws do is set groups protected by them up as a superior class of citizens. Crimes against them then become worse than the same crime committed against non members of that group.

It's kind of like if one murders royalty they call it "Regicide". These Kings are considered superior to the common man so they need a special term to describe their murder. In these HC cases, it isn't good enough to describe the crimes against these superior people simply as assaults, murders, etc so we have to apply the term "hate crime" to reflect the special status of these victims that are better than the average citizen.

The better question, is in my opinion, does it really matter what anybody thinks? When was the last time a State or Federal representative ask any of their constituents what they thought any time they passed legislation?

Simply put, no government at any level gives a damn what we think. They never asked our opinions and care less what they are.

eber322 wrote:

All these hate crime laws do is set groups protected by them up as a superior class of citizens. Crimes against them then become worse than the same crime committed against non members of that group.

Very true. There shouldn't be special classes of people who are protected more (through stiffer penalties for hurting them) than the rest of us.

Bandit wrote:

The better question, is in my opinion, does it really matter what anybody thinks? When was the last time a State or Federal representative ask any of their constituents what they thought any time they passed legislation?
Simply put, no government at any level gives a damn what we think. They never asked our opinions and care less what they are.

I agree. We - the "little people" - don't matter at all to most of our elected officials. All they want us for is to get votes, which they do by giving us worthless promises and free stuff. I think we're living under the most corrupt federal government in our nation's history, and most Americans are so clueless they just keep re-electing the same garbage term after term. Ignorance can destroy a nation, and here in "Low Information Nation" we're destroying ourselves.