> All crimes are hate crimes.
Any cop will tell you that's baloney. A convenience store doesn't get robbed because the perp hates the store owner. He just wants the money.
> What a "Hate Crime" says is that some people are better than others and thus a crime against them is a worse that a crime against me or my family.
No, again you have been misled by the framing. A black guy can commit a hate crime against a white guy just as easily as the reverse. No hate crime statute anywhere says otherwise. The fact that a group of people is under attack -- no matter what the group -- is the issue.
> What you are affirming is that someone should receive extra punishment for their thoughts. Or what other people believe are the perps thoughts. And that's crap.
We can dispose of the offhand "what other people believe are the perps thoughts" quickly: If I were to wave a baseball bat in your face and scream "You faggot you deserve to die", you don't exactly have to guess what I'm thinking. 'Kay? If the statement about the motivation is not made as part of the crime, though, there's no chilling effect, hence it's not a hate crime.
As for punishing their thoughts, again no, same reasoning. They can commit the same crime with the same thoughts in their head and it can *not* be a hate crime if they leave out the threats to the rest of the threatened class.
You CANNOT punish someone for what they think whether it's verbalised or not. What you are also pushing is that some victims have special status. Bunk. A victim is a victim.
Your leftist bilge is flawed thinking.
If people are TRULY equal, there are NO "special" classes of people. All are equal under the law. No one should have more protection than another.
You believe that a crime committed against an individual who is a member of a state protected collective group is more serious than a crime committed against an individual who is not in a state approved collective group.
That's classic Marxist thought that values collectives more than an individual. Try DU. Try Daily kos. Try the socialist democrat party. The honking collectivists there will welcome you.
"We can dispose of the offhand "what other people believe are the perps thoughts" quickly: If I were to wave a baseball bat in your face and scream "You faggot you deserve to die", you don't exactly have to guess what I'm thinking. 'Kay? If the statement about the motivation is not made as part of the crime, though, there's no chilling effect, hence it's not a hate crime."
Nope. Could have been just an insult prior to a pummeling. Here you are having to prove your thoughts. If a homosexual EVER got into a fight with a heterosexual, the hetero would be placed in a position of PROOVING he was fighting with the homo for a legetimate reason and not for just being homosexual. Hate crime legislation forms protected classes of victims exclusive to other people. This would not be 'equal justice under the law."