Please explain the logic of a "hate crime law".

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There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for hate crime laws, and for the life of me I can't figure out the rational for them.

"Hate crime" sure sounds dangerously close to "thought crime". Do hate crime law supporters worry at all about giving the government the power to judge and punish thoughts? Should it be illegal to hate a group of people for non-approved reasons? If a Jewish person were to kill a neo-Nazi should he be tried twice (murder and hate crime) or given extra punishment because he hated Nazis as a group?

Why not just punish criminals according to the provable physical acts they commit, without regard to the "group status" of the victim? That's what the people in Jasper Texas did with respect to the horrible dragging murder that occured there. The first criminal got death, the other life imprisonment. How would a hate crime law have made any difference in that case?

I'm not trying to P.O. anyone, but for the life of me I have never heard a rational argument for hate crime laws. The arguments that I have heard all boil down to emotional appeals that are often dangerously close to calls for lynching. I admit that if my friend or relative had in fact been lynched, then I'd want to "get a rope" as quickly as possible, but that state of mind doesn't seem to be beneficial to forming good public policy.

If you support hate crime laws, please help me understand why they might be a good thing.

-- Anonymous, March 22, 2000

Answers

Jim: we talked about this on this forum a long time ago. I would refer you to that discussion.

-- Anonymous, March 22, 2000

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