Sen. Craig Opposes Hate Crimes to Include Homosexuals
 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/0...s_n_66147.html

What an idiot.

So you're free to exist if you happen to be a gayer in the US, but if you want respect for it, you gone to tha wrong countree. May as well move to Iran, with no native gays they probably have a gap in the market there.

I am baffled, why do we need a law making violence a criminal offence on the basis of gender, sexual orientation etc when violence is already an offence?

Its worse to commit an act of violence on a homosexual than it is a heterosexual or on an asian person than an caucasian?

Shouldnt we be condemning all violence against a person as equally reprehensible rather than elevating specific groups above others?

Is it me or has common sense in this world gone straight out of the bloody window

yes we should condemn all violence against a person, but the sad thing is that some violence ONLY occurs as a result of negative feelings about one's race, gender, sexuality, etc. until that sort of thing stops happening, then there need to be laws to protect "other" people from that sort of violence.

I'm probably with you on this one. As awful as it is to hate anyone, it is your right, in this country, to hate. You don't have the right to perpetrate violence. That's why we already have laws against violence. When we start policing people's thoughts and ideals, even if they are the ugliest thoughts and ideals, then I get scared.

so what about when people start acting on that hate?

That's when they become lawbreakers and need to be punished severely.

Vernon Reid, the black guitarist from Living Colour, described it best when talking about racist Guns and Roses lyrics. He said (and I'm paraphrasing) that he hates the fact that Axl would sing such lyrics, but he would be more opposed to a society that would take away his right to do so.

i agree. hate all you want, but there need to be laws that protect people who live certain lifestyles or whatever from ignorant fucks who can't keep a lid on their feelings and let that passion permeate their actions. but it needn't always necessarily a violent act to be considered breaking the law, i don't think. flying a swastika in front of a group of jewish people, or hanging nooses in the open for people of color to see; those things aren't just hateful thoughts, those are symbols that, in the past, preceded some very horrendous acts. those things, to us, are promises of what's to come.

Do you think swastikas should be illegal? I doubt that any of the proposed hate crime laws include the display of offensive symbols.

no, swastikas shouldn't be illegal. keep it in your house all you want, but when you take it into public in a negative manner, you need to be held accountable for your actions.

what about burning crosses?

Well those are a fire hazard so no.

We don't want to start a fire like the 1906 San Francisco fire.

On a more sinister note, I was reading yesterday that bullying of homosexual kids at school has reached an all time high in Britain. What do gay groups do to raise awarness on this matter? They make a musical. Jesus wept big fat gay tears.

I say state-enforced buggering of homophobes.

We'll be sure to let you tell that to gay kid tied to the tetherball poll beaten within an inch of his life, Captain Sympathy.

I mean we all got the living shit beaten out of us on a daily basis in high school, right? Right?

You're right, Justice is a shit idea anyways. Somedays you get stabbed to death, other days you do the stabbing. That's life.

Perhaps it's because you are a complete idiot, but you might want to remind yourself that some kids get bullied for 'being suspected of being gay', not just because thay are at an age when confusion of any kind also makes them more vulnerable to many things, including being bullied. Your level of ignorance on this matter doesn't give you any right to express an opinion, and this coming from someone who escaped being bullied altogether, gay or not.

Edit - Sway

Are people not protected by the very fact that violence against the person is already illegal?

Wouldn't the common sense approach be to treat all violence as equally unacceptable under one non discriminatory law and to take into account the circumstances and reasons behind the violence on sentencing?

What's really sad is that it takes all the might of the most powerful government in the world to stop children from being bullied... :( They're almost as bad as paedophiles...

Ignorance rebukes the desire to fight for your right to exist, that's for sure. As for marches in general, there are certainly many that fail to make themselves taken seriously, I agree, but there are also some that are necessary and come with organized thinking/action behind. I doubt you know what you seem so keen to argue about. With your type of thinking and attitude, you'd let anything and anyone shit on you on a daily basis.

I doubt that you have all that much to worry about, judging by the amount of time that you seem to spend on here fighting pointless fights. Go and re-read your post and tell me if it doesn't come across like you're trying to say that all demos or political activism are pointless and then come back with a more thoughtful reply.

obviously not. the shit still happens.

So does burglary, murder and stealing cars and everything else thats illegal

Name me one crime that is on the statute books that never gets committed

Once something is illegal you can't make it "more" illegal by tagging on specific categories of people

Illegal is illegal

What this type of legislation does is give the impression that its worse to assault a homosexual for being homosexual than it is to hospitalise someone because you are drunk and just don't like the look of them

It isn't, its wrong to assault anyone period

We should be condemning violence as a whole not elevating specific groups above the general population

There is adequate legislation already to punish violence, take the reason for the violence into account on sentencing and lets get back to common sense law not this absolute nonsense designed to keep certain high flying law firms in business

Well, yes, that's true but it simply doesn't happen that way. Of course violence towards any individual should be punished, regardless of their ethnic origin or sexuality. The reality is different, though, and people do get assaulted because someone doesn't like their perceived effeminate body language or the colour of their skin, amongst other things.

i agree with this. i have a lot of problems with hate crime laws.... just punish the crime.

Hmm, what about rape then?

what do you mean? rape itself is a crime.

I am not saying it doesn't happen for those reasons, all I am simply saying is violence is violence is violence

You can't legislate to make it "more" of a crime, its already illegal!

By legislating separately for a group or groups and stating its a more serious offence to assault them, you, by default, make it less of an offence to assault someone outside of those groups thus devaluing them as a member of society

Girlgun summed it up best "punish the crime"

Exactly, but how many cases have to be re-assested because it is not always clear what seems to constitute rape for a court of justice? Wouldn't you have to treat such cases specifically like a crime that involved rape, rather than general GBH?

i didn't realize there were a lot of instances of rapes being hate crimes. rape is an act of violence in the first place... a hate crime against women?

i do realize there are reasons hate crime laws were put into place, but i do believe they are better in theory than in practice though.

Well, we are all saying the same thing, basically, but violence happens to be also case-specific and different cases need a different type of approach to assest that the crime has taken place, so that's why you need to make a clear separation with some of them. Again, of course violence is abberant in any shape or form.

Well, thanks, I've already said that with my previous post. And many cases of rape are hate crimes against women.

the real issue here is being avoided.

the hate crime laws already exist and they are attempting to prevent "sexual orientation, gender, disability" from being included.

a discriminatory anti-discrimination law is bunk at it's foundation.

this can apply to almost any law though.

"hate crime laws" were put into place so that inviduals who were obviously committing a crime that WAS more severe (due to the actions and reasoning behind it), could be adequately prosecuted as such.

(non-violent) example:

Tagger_X spray paints "Tagger_X wuz here" on the side of a convenience store.

Hitlers 'lil Helper paints "ALL JEWZ MUSST DIE!" on the side of a synagogue.

one is obviously worse than the other, yet previously, both would be simply vandalism. they ARE NOT the same crime, yet no law existed that defined them as different (mostly because nobody gave a fuck what people thought of "jews and niggers", and STILL DON'T care about "gays and women").

What a moron. What an absolute idiot.

Absolutely. In the UK at least, the government started sending letters to people with mental disabilities that allude to the fact that new laws are being introduced to make them go back into employment unless they can prove that they are physically crippled. Some of those people that the government have already targeted include people with HIV because of the advancements in the treatment of this virus with things like combination therapy. What they completely (and purposely) fail to take into account is the fact that combination therapy is such a strong cocktail of drugs that it does affect the mental stability of a person living with the virus to the extent that they might find themselves incapable of overcoming mental issues that arise because of this.

The crime taking place in the example you give here would be one of criminal damage in the UK

Once guilt had been established in court you could fine Tagger_X for being a self publicity seeking asshole and jail Hitlers lil helper for being a hate mongering bigot

So tell me wtf you need two separate laws to deal with what can already adequately be dealt with in sentencing under one?

I don't know much about UK law, but in the US they BOTH would have got fined and released (if even arrested at all).

I'm a "less law the better" kind of guy, but people who were committing disproportional crimes were essentially getting off due to lack of any type of law to describe their actions (and I still insist Tagger_X and Hitler's 'lil Helper did not commit the same type of crime).

surely UK law is decades ahead of us poor colonial types. it wasn't all that long ago that discrimination was actually encouraged by the state here (and apparently still is in Louisiana).

besides, I don't think that we are seeing much abuse of the "hate crime laws" on the side of the police here. if they were, there would be a lot more nazi's seeking dates on http://www.meet-an-inmate.com/ (as opposed to the mostly black male prison population).