Nenya Kanadka

I've never really understood the whole point of hate crime legislation. If someone does something awful to someone, they should go to jail. I'm not really caring why they did it. But if hate crime laws cover race and religion, they should cover all the various differences that are the subject of hate by well-armed bigots.

I see no reason the president shouldn't sign it. He can't very well be for senseless beatings, can he?

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I believe it's so they can criminalize certain things that wouldn't be illegal otherwise - hate propaganda, for example. At least, that's how it works in Canada - though come to think of it, I don't think hate speech is restricted in the States, so this law wouldn't apply to that.

(I have somewhat mixed feelings about the hate speech legislation we've got, myself - I don't like censorship, and in a perfect world, I'd be for complete freedom of speech. But practically speaking, I think those laws do more good than not, so I do support them.)

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Yeah, see, the things it seems to cover here are already illegal. Like, for example, beating someone to death with a golf club -- totally already a crime. And you know how Americans are with the whole 'freedom of speech' thing -- we really tend to get hysterical about it, which makes legislation against even the most offensive speech impossible. Hence my not getting this.

Maybe there's an awareness issue, and the law reminds some few people of the potential problem, but I don't see how those being reminded are the ones who might break the law in question. I don't think anyone likely to beat someone with a golf club is all that apt to pause, reflect on legislation, and change their mind. It's about a moral compass, and compassion, and even common sense, not about weighing the wording of potential charges. People who are in the act of committing assault aren't really about the long-term planning and the considering of potential consequences, as a rule.

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I should add that I'm not against the legislation, I'm just not understanding how it helps. But if it does help, at all, in any way, then great.

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One thing it helps with is getting justice after the fact--if you have a federal law, it's easier to insist that this case where the frat boys beat up a gay kid gets looked into, when maybe the local police didn't think it was all that important, because, heh heh, it was a gay kid after all, wasn't it? Kind of like the use of making federal civil rights laws about racial discrimination, instead of leaving it to states & cities. The big thing about this particular law is that it's federal.

Some people have said they think hate crimes laws criminalize thought--you get a harsher penalty if you beat the guy up because he was black or gay than if you beat him up just because you wanted his money. But really, you're considering the exact same thing in a hate-crimes case as you are in any other case: intent. You get a harsher penalty if you intentionally beat the guy to death, having planned it ahead of time, than if you were robbing his house and lashed out at him with something heavy when he caught you. It's about saying that as a society we think it's very bad to kill or beat someone, and it's even worse if you did it because they were just different from you.

That's my take anyway. (And I'm all, yay, people are commenting on my post, too, lol.)

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Some people have said they think hate crimes laws criminalize thought

Why that is such a bad thing, I don't know. It's not as if you get hit by it if you just don't like blacks or gays or whatever, it only catches you if you would act on that dislike. And to have crimestop wrt hurting people because they are different is not such a very bad thing at all...I think.

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the-resa.livejournal.com

I've had the displeasure of knowing a few fellows who hated something enough for violence and, trust me, this kind of person tends to be extra-odinarily stupid. They're the ones that need the extra instructions attached to the hair dryer so they don't try to use it in the shower.

So -- they need things spelled out. "This is good, this is bad." They need to see in print that beating up that fellow because of his color or sexual preference is illegal and will send you to jail.

Trust me on this. The two in question had fairly decent IQs -- but zero common sense or ability to understand cause and effect. And their meanness made them extremely stupid. The fact that either lived to adulthood still surprises me.

So yeah, you need to spell it out for these people.

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You can never tell what'll set off a long comment thread, can you? :)

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amazon-syren.livejournal.com

I think part of it is... Well, as Nenya said, it's about intent.

To take a far less extreme example than beating someone to death with a golf club:

Spray painting graffiti all over a wall is, technically, a crime. But it's, like, 'mischief'. It's not a *big* crime. Spray painting your tag on a random wall is no big deal.

Spray painting, say, 'fags suck' on a random wall is dumb.

Spray painting 'fags suck' specifically on the wall of the house of your neighbourhood lesbians, however, is about more than just 'airing your grievances' to the world at large. That kind of thing is done, specifically, to threaten/intimidate a particular person (or group there-of).

If you have hate-crime legislation in place, the lesbians and their lawyer can point out that the 'fags suck' slogan was clearly meant to intimidate the people living in the house, and have that statement backed up by law.
Whereas, if there is no such legislation, then the representation of the spray-painters can (theoretically) get them off with something like:
"It was just a little graffiti. You're over-reacting. If they'd actually meant to intimidate these women and their 'lifestyle', wouldn't they have, like, ganged up on them in a parking lot or something?"
The intent of the crime could be easily overlooked (on purpose or not) by the judge simply because there's nothing on the law books that says they have to pay more attention to it than that.

Y'know? :-)

So that's how it helps. I think. ;-)

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This is all true. Possibly the awareness issue plays more of a role than you'd think, though - in that including this in the list of Things It's Bad To Hate People For may help to reinforce social acceptance of GLBT people. Besides being something that just should be in there for fairness' sake, if one is going to have hate crime laws to begin with, as you pointed out earlier.

But, yeah...there's not a lot of point in having hate crime laws about stuff that's illegal anyway, unless the penalties are different (I have no idea if they are).

Hee. You said it, not me. ;) Actually, I would have been a little more diplomatic, but it is something Americans as a whole seem to place great cultural importance on. Canadians do consider freedom of speech important (and we're not immune to American cultural influences, either), but - it's not an unconstrained right, and I don't think most of us believe it should be. Or you'd see more protesting when someone does get charged under the hate speech law (and, ahem, maybe you would if the law didn't specifically exempt religious-based hate speech, as long as it doesn't cross the line into inciting violence. But not exempting religion would open a can of worms I think we really don't want to get into.)

Also? Cool IDIC icon. :D (Oops, my Trekkie colours are showing...*blushes*)

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It is true that the hate-crimes laws in the US are different from the ones in Canada, in that they don't criminalize hate speech unless it's particularly directly inciting to violence. And they have pretty distinct religious exceptions, too, which means that anyone going "Oh noes, if this law passes we won't be able to quote the Bible about homosexuality any more without being arrested, oh noes!" is lying their head off.

(Not that I would mind a more enlightened interpretation of my religion's holy books on the subject of gayness, either, mind you. But even if you do feel it incumbent upon you to yell about The Ghey Agenda from the pulpit, the government ain't gonna stop you, unless maybe a couple of your church members proceed to go attack someone while quoting you in loud voices.)

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But even if you do feel it incumbent upon you to yell about The Ghey Agenda from the pulpit, the government ain't gonna stop you . . .

Well I sure wish someone would, although not the government. That kind of preaching turns people against God and religion, and that's quite simply evil. As for sexual sin, Christ died for our sins, that we may be forgiven. So even if being gay was a sin, which why would God make people that way if it was, it's not any more of a danger than anything else. Adultery is a sin, because people get hurt. But sex between committed people who love each other? God's cool with that, and anyone who doesn't get that hasn't read the Bible properly at all.

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Have you ever heard of the gay panic defense? Hate crime legislation, I think, might do something to reduce the effectiveness of such legal defenses. Re: awareness, the law also serves to remind everyone else that this sort of attitude towards GLBTs is unacceptable; lots of people would agree with the beating-someone-up-cos-he's-gay, even if they didn't actually do it themselves. It's a kick to the collective of haters. And it's really useful to have a specific law that one can cite in arguments with other people--"look, the govt thinks this isn't right, it's not like we're some strange minority of people calling for equal rights". It's all about changing attitudes and people's minds.

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That's a good point. I hadn't thought about it in that context.

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Wow. People are sicker than I thought.

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That is generally always true. It's like Rule 34, except different.

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amazon-syren.livejournal.com

Er... "Rule 34"?

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"There is porn of it. No exceptions."

There are websites devoted to proving the truth of this. The corollary is "If no porn is found of it, it will be made."

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amazon-syren.livejournal.com

Hm. Okay. So... What are the other 33(+) rules, and where can I find them? :-)

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Um. They can be found here, but a lot of them are in-jokes from 4chan, so maybe you won't get them? Also, it's 4chan. It's a bad idea to stay in too much contact with things from 4chan. It makes your head go...wrong.

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I didn't know there was another name for Quantum Fetish Mechanics, but I suppose there must be....

And yes, what ARE the other 33 rules?

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Heeeeee! Thanks for the comic.

See above comment; also note caveat.

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Also? There is xkcd of Rule 34.

(Which I had read before and nodded along to, though I had no idea what the rule # meant--probably skipped over that bit in the comic, in my head.)

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YES YES god bless him and that's rule 35 in action :D

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Hell yeah.

And no doubt he will, but if it's survived this long, I think it stands a decent chance.

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They might even have a high enough majority to overturn a veto, I don't know. In which case he might not try. One can hope! Yay.

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