(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Hate crime legislation has a long history around the world and many would argue that it's rooted in the finest of intentions, though not always the best conclusions.

Points to consider:

• since a crime (such as assaulting someone with a bat, for example) is the same act regardless of who is hitting and who gets hit, do heavier sentences based on motivation constitute as a policing of thought?
  
• broadening of federal hate crime legislation in the US in 2009 now effectively means any crime can be considered a hate crime if it can be proven that it is motivated by difference in a wide range of areas, including but not limited to: actual or perceived gender, gender expression, religion, and of course skin color.
  

[first point] In my opinion, when you criminalize motive, as one for a 'hate' crime, you are leading people to believe that it's illegal [not merely looked down upon] to have certain thoughts; I think that's a very bad precedent to set. While it is everyone’s right to freedom, protection of the government, to pursue happiness; it is also wrong for the government to victimize people, even inadvertently.

[second point] The biased motivations are not going to be objectively analyzed, and will then be nearly impossible to prove the motivation of a 'hate' crime. Freedom of thought and expression is thus really what is needed to eliminate prejudices, not thought police, for the latter always leads to the worst kind of mass prejudices; which is more dangerous than any individual could be.

What are your thoughts?

so if i hate you and then we go to a bar and get into a fight its a federal crime, lold hate crimes are fucking stupid

What's wrong with the precedent? Slippery slope arguments are fallacies because X maybe leading to Y doesn't explain why X is bad in the first place.

As far as whether or not hate crime laws, distinguished from their counterparts, should exist - the short answer is no. It's simple really: any motive to commit a crime should be deemed disrespectful by society. Hatred as a motive is no better or worse than greed, lust or anger. Crimes of passion and accidents fall outside of a sense of consciousness and control and can be deemed lesser crimes, but any conscious commitment to a crime is automatically disreputable by social convention.

Yes, if you assault me because I am *insert minority*, then you will get a harsher sentence than if it was for another reason.



The precedent of thought policing, it is not a slippery slope argument.

and this is also when we fight for equality and if it was truely a equal country laws such as this wouldn't exist

Yes it is: "you are leading people to believe that it's illegal [not merely looked down upon] to have certain thoughts"

It doesn't explain why thought policing motivation is in itself bad. People use(d) the same line of reasoning with interracial or homosexual relationships, because pedophilia is socially rejected then we must advocate against any precedent that could lead to pedophilia. To put that in your line of reasoning:

when you criminalize motive, as one for a 'hate' crime, you are leading people to believe that it's illegal [not merely looked down upon] to have certain thoughts

when you legalize taboo marriages, as one for an interracial couple, you are leading people to believe that it's legal [not merely accepted] to have certain sexual attractions

It's an extreme example, but that's the case and point - you can't argue that it's bad simply because tangentially related items can be perceived as being bad by any intellectually honest person. The social construct of justice means that society judges based on the information, arguments and evidence supplied to them - hate crime laws have firm grounds in social morality, which is the entire basis of law in the first place.

At this point, it is quite evident you haven't read the thread fully, refer to this: The biased motivations are not going to be objectively analyzed, and will then be nearly impossible to prove the motivation of a 'hate' crime. Freedom of thought and expression is thus really what is needed to eliminate prejudices, not thought police, for the latter always leads to the worst kind of mass prejudices; which is more dangerous than any individual could be.



I understand your logic, though it is faulty; perhaps it was a bad choice of words on my part, but it is illegal to have certain thoughts, not leading people to believe. I'll take the blame for my poor explanation.

Which of the words are you struggling with and I'll try to help you:

1. precedent
2. precedent
3. precedent

When you claim something is a precedent (i.e. thought policing) you are saying that it is an example that will be referred to for future decision making - which can really only be read one way, the thought policing of hate crime motivations will lead to further thought policing, that doesn't make thought policing of hate crimes itself a bad thing. As for "not reading the thread" I thought it was just permissible to not address erroneous claims like "will [then] be nearly impossible to prove the motivation of 'hate' crime" because we have several methods of proving hate crimes - uncharged misconduct, previous misconduct, testimony and character inference.

Sure there are some flaws that have surfaced over the past three decades, due primarily to relaxed law enforcement regulation (sounds a bit like public schooling in America, shame) and has eased the burden of proof on prosecution where the accused is white and the victim is a minority in order to succeed with more hate crime prosecutions. Yet a shift in the definition of hate crime would be all that's necessary to refocus the statutes that hate crime laws stand for. Due process only goes so far when hate crime laws, in their current manifestation, are a blatant contradiction to the equal opportunity clause.

Nah, I don't think hate crimes should exist. Shit happens and everyone won't like you lol, deal with it.