[panthermom]

Does it matter? The victim was a human being.

[muddler]

It matters in that it wasn’t what it appeared to be.

[tanknetter]

Does it matter? The victim was a human being.

Nope, it doesn't matter at all.

What DOES matter is that this is now going to be treated as a hate crime. Not because of the black-on-white nature of the assault, but rather of the straight-on-transgendered nature of it.

Which is an absolute travesty and demonstrates, clearly, that the "equal provisions" clause of the 14th Amendment is a farce.

OTOH, it's going to be damn amusing to watch as this plays out, since this is going to pit two major Dem demographic constituencies against one another and is going to expose some of the considerable fault lines in the Dem/Liberal coalition (since "homophobia" is pervasive within the culture of the African-American community - witness the real reasons behind what happened with Prop 8 out in California a few years back).