Posted on 09/15/2005 6:48:47 AM PDT by Antoninus
"Hate" crimes as a definition should be considered unconstitutional as it affords special protective status to certain groups bassed on ethnicity, etc.
If somebody kills you dead, the reason, unless there is justification, is irrelevant.
This Country is going down the tubes - at an accelerating rate.
Welcome to FR. I notice you didn't respond to post 28 that was addressed to you.
"It seems to me your issue is with the hate crime law itself, not the protect of gays under the law."
Well, you would be mistaken. There is no such thing as a "hate crime." Crimes are crimes because of what happened, not what one was thinking or feeling at the execution of the crime. Human emotion should not be against the law. Human action should.
Soon, it will be a crime for a minister to teach against homosexuality, or does this law do that?
Dressing up anal sex in flowery civil rights language is something I thought I would never see in a Republican congress.
There should be NO hate crime laws. In fact, there were no hate crime laws until the left invented them not all that long ago.
Hate crime laws basically are thought crime laws. You get extra punishment for bopping someone in a protected class on the head than you would if you bopped an unprotected individual on the head, because the bopping supposedly demonstrates that your thoughts toward the protected group aren't what the state thinks they should be.
So if you bop a gay guy on the head you get more years in jail than if you bop someone with red hair on the head, since the state hasn't decided that red haired people are all that important as a group. Which is another way of saying that red haired people don't have political action committees or vote as a block.
In addition to being wrong in the first place, hate crimes laws aren't equally enforced. Any slight against a gay will likely be declared a hate crime while gays will still freely be able to invade Christian churches and pelt kids in the face with condoms and get a free pass.
Anyone can see where this is heading. People in Canada can now be fined or imprisoned for promoting "hate" merely for stating in print that homosexuality is immoral or that it spreads disease.
The Constitution states that Congress shall that the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
How the hell can a violent act between individuals, regardless of motivation, be construed as commerce subject to federal regulation?
Read this absurd Supreme Court case for a clear example of judicial activism. Wickard v. Filburn (New Deal law punishes small farmer for growing wheat on his own land - even for his own consumption)
One would like to think that the "commerce" clause exists to promote free and fair trade among the states (prohibit trade barriers). How ignorant of us to be so inclined. Should have known all along that the Founding Fathers intended the commerce clause to empower the federal government to punish gay bashing.
"Attacking any human being is one thing, preying on a particular class of human beings makes it worse, and thus, perhaps, deserving of greater punishment"
According to that logic, criminals who prey on the rich specifically or say tourists specifically would have harsher sentences? I don't get it. What is a "class"? Define that. In an equal society, no "class" is supposed to be treated differently in the eyes of the law. I don't see how encouraging that could do anything but create division.
It's even more insidious than that. It establishes in law the outrageous concept of "thought crimes:" that government can punish you for what it claims you were thinking when you were doing the deed. It's only a minor leap from that to creating Gulags for anyone accused of having thoughts that deviate from the Official Party Line. Don't tell me that's ridiculous. It's happened in the USSR, China and other Communist countries within most Freepers' lifetimes.
Does someone who commits a "hate" crime against a homosexual hate the victim more than, say, a wife who cuts her husband's penis off? And just who is the government mind-reader who is able to tell what thoughts the perp was thinking at the time of the crime?
We're getting into totalitarian never-never land with this kind of stuff. It's very dangerous and once it's established it'll be like trying to get rid of "emergency" taxes.
Kolbe voted "aye." I'm shocked, just shocked.
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