This is also not how it works. A hate crime is not a separate charge, it is a modification of an existing charge, like first-degree murder or aggravated assault, that determines what punishment you get if convicted, and which requires the prosecutor to prove additional facts in order to get a conviction. You cannot be charged with just the “hate crime”, any more than you can be charged with just “first-degree”, or just “aggravated”, and there are no Double Jeapardy implications.

This is simply not how things work. If a lawyer presented such a case, based solely on the fact that there is no proof you didn’t hit the guy because he was gay, the judge would laugh in their face and then toss it. And maybe start disciplainary proceedings. A lawyer with the ink still drying on her JD could easily demolish the case, in the astronomically unlikely event it got that far.

This would. Not. Happen.

Our justice system simply does not work that way, and this bill does not change it so that it would.

That is a legitimate point of view, and you should have focused on that, instead of spouting off a bunch of counter-factual hysteria about OMG THOUGHT POLICE!!!

“Oh, and, I find it interesting that you don;t mind if pedophelia is legal. That is pretty sick of you, don’t you think?”

I made no such claim. If you look at my post you will notice I said that:

“This does not mean that pedophelia is okay, or that you will be arrested for speaking out aganst it, or for using violence to prevent a pedophile from harming a child.”

…which should make it pretty clear that I do not condone the abuse of children. The first distinction you are failing to notice, however, is that performing an illegal act does remove the protection of the law from the perpetrator. You don’t get to beat up pedophiles just because the’re pedophiles, any more than you get to beat up tax-cheats, wife-beaters or jay-walkers.

The second distinction you fail to notice is that a sexual orientation is defined without regard to whether or not it is practiced. It is, in fact, perfectly legal to be a pedophile, so long as you abstain and do not act on your urges. You don’t get to beat up people for what they might want to do, but don’t do. A person has the right to be Hitler between their ears, as long as that’s where it stays.

Does this make me entirely happy? No, but, like free speech laws that protect Nazis as well artists, it’s something I’m willing to live with.

(p.s. Accusing me of supporting pedophelia? Really? That’s pretty scummy, and seems to me like the sort of thing that would violate your decorum rules. I’d ask for an apology, if I thought you were capable of sincerely offering one.)

Now, back to the defense of state of mind. How is a jury to know why a person attacked someone? Until now, it has been the DA’s job to establish motive. Can the simple failure of the DA to do so result in a hate crime conviction? Let’s say some guy is in my face, I don’t like it, so I punch him. Hard. More than once. Okay. I get arrested for assault, as I should be. Turns out, the guy is gay. The police ask why I punched him. Now, it gets tricky. If I give a motive, I cop to the assault. I have a 5th amendment Right not to do that. So I stay mum. Cops can’t establish motive, but the guy is gay. What are they gonna do? Investigate more fully? i’d like to think so. But what if they don’t. They COULD just charge me with a hate crime. After all, I hit they guy, and he’s gay. Cut and dry, right? So I get charged. All the evidence is going to point to the jury that I hit the guy. The DA may never even present the case that i, myself, don’t like gay people. He’ll just talk about the fact that the victim is gay, and that I hit him, seemingly for no other reason.

In other words, the defendent is now in the position to EITHER excersise his right to remain silent, OR avoid being charged/maybe convicted with a “greater” crime.

Or, let’s say, fine. I cop to the assault and explain my reasons. All the jury has is my word. And as I’m sure the DA will point out, that is the word of a guy who’s just copped to an assault.

Are you starting to understand the problem here? Is it starting to become clear? I hope so, because I honestly don’t have time, now that I’ve laid the pieces out, to put them all together for you. It’s time for lunch.

1) First, only certain groups of people or attributes are protected against “hate”. So gender identity is protected but being a veteran is not, for instance. A black is protected but not a white, and probably other groups such as Pacific Islanders.

So it’s not the concept of hate that you want to penalize, only hate directed against certain politically connected identity groups. And if you don’t belong to such a group, you’re out-of-luck.

2) Second, there’s the issue of quantitating the hate, or determining what is the threshold level. How many e-mails, group memberships, hearsay conversations, etc. will be the trigger point for saying that this person actually has “hate” as opposed to say discomfort or a bad sense of humor. Or dislike or moral objection – this is all subjective and is likely to depend on the identity of the accused and the political clout of his identity group (Baptist vs. Musliim vs. white Catholic vs. ethnic Catholic vs. Black Muslim).

And particularly when this hate crime enhancement will be at the discretion of the prosecutor, we’re going to see community pressure and intimidation come into play – where again the identity group of the accused will have an undue influence on the case disposition. Another unblinding of justice.

3) Then there’s the question of tying the hatred to the victim – even say if the person has a hatred towards gays, etc., was this hatred operative during this crime. Was the accuser even aware of whether the victim was gay or was this coincidence. And at what point does the hatred kick-in in terms of premeditation. And how much of this will be inference vs. actual evidence. Or how sympathetically the victim can be drawn.

4) And how will we keep the burden of proof on the prosecution side. Especially if the crime itself produces revulsion, how will a jury be able to separate it’s revulsion at the crime from the issue of hate enhancement – or will it just be a way to throw the book, or for the prosecutor to lower the evidence level for the actual crime (i.e. this is a hateful guy, therefore his likelihood of having the crime is higher by virtual of that hatred).

See, here’s the ugly little secret about this: by assessing punishment BASED ON THOUGHT, what they do is open the door to rendering those thoughts illegal? How? Pretty easily, actually. It’s almost as simple as math. Try this:

Assault is illegal. Let’s say it carries a penalty of 3 years. I’m not a lawyer, and I haven’t checked to see, so let’s just go with my assumptions for the sake of argument.

Through an assessment of the charge as a “hate crime” — something that can ONLY be a subjective judgement, by the way (for example, what if a person hates gay people, but only assaulted the victim to get his wallet? Do you or don’t you charge him with a hate cime?) — further penalties are assessed to add 2 years.

did the victim bleed more because of the assailant’s motive? Is he somehow MORE vicimized in this particular instance? (Man, this WOULD have only rated a seven on the pain scale, but since he hit me because I’m gay, it’s an ELEVEN!).

So what we’ve done then, is take a three-year crime and, based on WHY it happened, make it a 5-year crime. That means the convict gets three years for the assault, and two years for hating the guy before punching him.

So, though the bill doesn’t actually make hate, in and of itself, a crime, it penalizes you for it. This sets a precedent that hate is, in fact, punishable by law.

Try nothing because there isn’t anything TO do “about it.” Violent crime is ALREADY against the law. There is no more “worse” to it.

Oh, and, I find it interesting that you don;t mind if pedophelia is legal. That is pretty sick of you, don’t you think?

Yes, exactly, if by “legitimized as unassailable” you mean it will be illegal to assault someone just because of their actual or percieved sexual proclivities. Which is true now, by the way.

“…any crime or speech against these proclivities will be suddenly termed a “hate crime.”

No it won’t. If it is not a crime now, it will not be a crime after this bill passes. Everything you can say now you will be able to say then. This bill only modifies how punishment is assesed, not what sorts of acts are punished.

“We will also have codified crime based on thought if this bill passes.”

We already have done so. Long, long ago, too Motive plays a role indeterming what sort of punishment should be administered in most cases. Hence, premeditated murder, mens rea, etc. This is nothing new.

“How will a judge or prosecutor determine if “hate” was the basis for crime, anyway?”

How does a judge determine if someone was killed in a fit of passion, or for the insurance money? How does a prosecutor determine if a death was intentional or accidental? Like I said, this is nothing new.

“Of course, just what “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” is going to be codified by law as worthy of protection from “hate crime” and what is not?”

The short answer is ALL sexual and gender identities, real or percieved. That is why is says “sexual orientation” rather than “homosexuality”.

“Are we going to include pedophelia in this?”

Well, yeah. If you beat up someone just because you are unger the impression that the’re a pedophile, correctly or not, this is a crime. In fact, it’s a crime right now. This does not mean that pedophelia is okay, or that you will be arrested for speaking out aganst it, or for using violence to prevent a pedophile from harming a child. It just means that you cannot commit a crime against somene because you think they like kids.

So, yes, pedophilia will be included. What of it?

As to Matthew Shepard, what actually happened in that situation is irrelevant. That may have formed part of the inspiration for getting the legislation passed, but is is not the *reason* for its existence. Hate crimes do happen, whether or not the death of Matthew Shepard happens to be an example of the phenomena. The only question is what you think ought to be done about it.

Dont let them slide. This would be extremely unpopular if people knew about it. Instead, the Dems probably had this on reserve for months waiting for mutliple headlines to create the necessary buffer from the people.

This thing sucks.

And the Senate will ultimately consider Waxman-Markey—1200 pages of nonsense which may be the most misguided policy ever written by the Congress. It too amounts to a massive tax increase, which will, in the words of the current White House occupant, “make your energy prices skyrocket”.

“Largest in history” is the common thread to all of these disasters. They follow passage of the largest “stimulus” bill in history…..but that one is already passed and done. We can’t do anything about the porkulus bill; just float bonds in an effort to finance it.

Against this backdrop, I think I’d probably let the hate crimes bill go. We have much bigger fish to fry—–like our economy, and somehow protecting our standard of living.

Because it changes to law to make some people more deserving of victim-hood than others.

“We will also have codified crime based on thought if this bill passes” How so?

That is evident from the article. I can’t help it if you are not too swift.

“Are we going to include pedophelia in this? If not, why not?” Pedophelia is illegal, being queer is not (not yet anyway) that’s why!

So is assault, that is sort of the whole reason for this brua ha ha, you are punishing similar crimes in different ways.

“Call your Senators and tell them to vote no” Yeah I’m gonna call senators Vitter and Ensign and tell them to stand up for traditional values!

The presence of hypocrites in no way invalidates the thing that those hypocrites may have championed. Your attitude is childish.