Plan B Forum

We long ago decided that motive matters when prosecuting and sentencing certain crimes. The murder of a police officer or murder for hire is punished more severely than the murder of your child's rapist or a murder pursuant to a bar fight. A hate crime designation is just one more instance in a long list where a particular motive is used to punish the exact same act more severely.

There is an intrinsic difference between random graffiti sprayed on a wall and swastikas sprayed on the tombstones in a Jewish cemetary, between an arson committed by a firebug and the firebombing of a mosque. Inherent in every hate crime is a threat of violence directed at anyone sharing the targeted characteristic. If that threat had been made verbally, it could be prosecuted and punished. But when that threat is telegraphed just as, if not more, clearly through a violent act, it would remain unpunished if prosecution were to be limited to the overt act, without the recognition that what has taken place is a hate crime i.e. is targeting anyone who shares the same characteristic.

It is also an unfortunate fact that prior to the advent of hate crimes legislation, the hatred/phobias/obsessions/whatever that motivated perpetrators to target that characteristic, far from being punished equally with more pedestrian motivations, would serve to lessen the punishment of the perpetrators, sometimes allowing grotesquely violent acts to result in little or no prison time. It was seen as understandable that a red blooded straight boy would be so repulsed by homosexuality that he would seek out queers to maim or kill. And of course very often they were being judged by people who thought just like them, and so were willing to give credence to absurdities like Dan White's Twinkie defence to avoid punishing cold blooded premeditated murder for what it was.