BS: Hate laws

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: mauvepink
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 11:59 AM

Thank you :-) I thought I had unwittingly done something wrong. Now I understand... I think!

Not having the best of days so I did wonder...

Thanks for the explanation. An interesting thread to be sure

mp

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: beardedbruce
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 11:56 AM

mp- if you post as "guest" and forget to put in a name, the post is deleted. I have been told to repost with name. Nothing personnal about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: mauvepink
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 11:41 AM

Just popped back to catch up on the thread and my original post under 'Guest' has vanished. Did I do something worng or say something the wong way? I apologise if that was the case. I was going to refer back to the definiation I put in it but cannot now because it's gone :-(

Sorry once again

mp

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 10:47 AM


The last paragraph of the original article make a good point about hate laws ghettoizing the hated and the perceived hating group, although with no evidence to prove the assertion.

First, "ghettoizing" is a judgment one can make, not an objective fact. No evidence that I can imagine could "prove" the assertion, though the statement seems persuasive.

But as to hate crimes, they are often group efforts, and it's worthwhile to look at some various levels of fault and/or guilt involved in a hate crime. This is by no means exhaustive.

Hate in itself is not a crime. To be disapproved of, of course, or at least regretted even if there is objective cause.

Making a speech of hate for a given group and the reasons therefor is not a crime (at least in the US); it's an exercise of free speech--however deplorable we see it as being.

Speaking of hate (as above) with, additionally, advocacy of criminal actions against the hated group is a different thing. Then it may fall into such a category as incitement to riot, a crime, and probably would be a hate crime. May fall into other categories than incitement to riot, too, for the too-literal-minded. And, depending upon circumstances and the details of the speech, it may make the speaker a member of a criminal conspiracy.

If a group is moved by that speech to riot or to some other crime, those who plan it, those who urge it, and obviously those who carry out actual acts toward commission of the crime (however trivial those acts may be) are co-conspirators, whether or not the intended crime ever actually takes place, and even if they do not know all the other conspirators. Thus, if the projected crime is to burn down a building, not only the planner(s) but say someone who buys a gallon of gasoline to be used in the arson, or who buys a package of matches for that purpose, are members of the conspiracy, and deemed guilty of any wrong that eventuates from that conspiracy, even if it's not the crime that was planned. So if the torch-man trips while carrying the can of gas to the building, fractures his skull and dies, every co-conspirator is guilty in his death! Even though no arson ever got carried out.

However, it's not clear whether a co-conspirator is chargeable with a hate crime based on his liability for the death under the conspiracy, where the death, "in the family" as it were, was not an effect to the hated target. I personally think not, and I doubt that a prosecutor would charge it that way even though it grew out of a hate-crime conspiracy.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Simon G
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 07:37 AM

I think I've understood from the discussion that in the UK there has to be a criminal offence before it can be a categroised as a hate crime. Which is actually news to me, from the press I had been under the impression there was a whole new set of criminal offences that potentially impacted free speech.

So making a speech saying an influx of martians would be bad for the country could not be construed in itself as a hate crime against martians. Making a speech inciting people to go out and assault martians because they are bad for the country would in the first instance be incitement to commit assault and then further categorised as a hate crime.

Have I got it right? Are other countries laws similar.

The last paragraph of the original article make a good point about hate laws ghettoizing the hated and the perceived hating group, although with no evidence to prove the assertion. If it does have this effect then it will be a bad day for our societies.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: GUEST,mauvepink
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 06:40 AM

Sorry Richard (Bridge) I left my name off as I was busily replying and pressed "submit" too quickly.

I always try to be constructive but, as with most things, opinions is all I can offer. Others opinions may differ but it does not mean they are wrong or right. So many times in life there is no right or wrong: just a persons individual opinion. All I am saying is that if we had a truly tolerent society then equal opportunites acts and hate crimes offences would not be part of our vocabularies. But, for now, I think they are needed to try and steer society and communities to a safer place. Most of the time it works without the laws being invoked but I, for one, feel safer that they are in place.

Folk music is a case in point I guess. Whilst we all have our own likes and dislikes - and opinions as to what even constitutes folk music - seldom do we see people fighting over choice of songs. We merely agree to disagree what is good on individual basis. But if we started hating people because their instrument of choice is not what we would have, or that they sing too 'trad' or not 'trad' enough, and be willing to beat them up just because their choice of instrument/song was not ours, we would all consider that totally unreasonable. I have seen threads on here where people have immediately defended the rights of the individual to do things that were not necessarily their own choice. I cannot think of many who would tolerate someone bullying over choice of song/instrument. We certainly have many a heated debate on Mudcat but I cannot think of any examples of a hate crime (against a folk singer scenario) here despite the arguments/differences of opinion that inevitably happen. Why it should happen in other minority groups and against seems to make no sense at all.

I'll shush again now as this is a area of debate/controversy that can get quite emotive. I would hate to get too emotional on the thread ;-)

mp

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 05:51 AM

How nice, a constructive GUEST. Do join and stick around.

Crow Sister - I learned my laws of sexual offences when the 1956 Act (as amendd in 1967) was still law, and it said "It is an offence for a man to rape a woman". Under that act no sexual attack by a man upon a man or by a woman upon a man was rape. You are right to point out that it has changed.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 04:43 AM

""An assault is, always has been and always will be about POWER. Sensing a lack of it or a drive to gain it, the perpetrator is somehow motivated all the way from believing in an imbalance of power to ACTING upon their desire to see that power-base shifted. Rape is almost NEVER about sexual fulfillment. The few rare exceptions are likely going to come from people whose views of what constitutes "sexual gratification" are twisted and inherently non-physiological.""


So in YOUR twisted philosophy, rape is an offence on the same level as a punch on the nose outside a bar?

Thanks for your US $0.02 worth. I'm sorry but I don't have change.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: akenaton
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 03:51 AM

Problem is how do you define a "hate crime", as in the case of the two lesbians who were attacked and one fatally injured in America, were they attacked because they were lesbians or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The media immediately stated that it was the former.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 03:11 AM

I don't think anyone said anything specifically about "men raping women", just "rape", so I'm sure we must include "men raping men" in the assessment.

I'm sure every fella would feel perfectly equally about being say punched or forcibly sodomised.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Aug 09 - 02:43 AM

Did I understand that correctly? You say that if a person believes that it is right for men to rape women, his right to live by those ideals must be guarded and protected? Get a grip, fella.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 10:11 PM

That was no masked man, that was your wife!



A

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Riginslinger
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 10:07 PM

Who was that masked man?

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Peace
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 08:18 PM

A face only his mother could love . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Peace
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 07:24 PM

But a good cigar is a smoke.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 01:19 PM

You know, perhaps it is about time as humans that we confront and understand the difference between thought and dramatization. I know this is a tricky wicket, and a difficult issue but it is the hingepoint. If we will not face the fact that psycho "acting out" is not the same as an effort to communicate a viewpoint, we will be hard put to ever address the issue of hate crime, because we value free speech so dearly, and rightly so.

As anyone who has had to deal with a rabid dog knows, thought control becomes necessary when the owner of the thought cannot control it himself, at least if it is precipitating harm to others. The reason we put bullets into German soldiers during WW II was to control thought. For example, the thought that anyone who was Jewish was part of a destructive conspiracy or a subhuman species--a thought well worth controlling, in my opinion.

I am entirely opposed to fascism, and thought-control as it is generally interpreted (see LH's arm-waving screed upthread). But if all thoughts are equal, then survival is no more valuable than destruction, and progress and regression are just one big murky blob of apathetic indifference.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 01:13 PM

An excerpt from the article quoted:

Yet von Brunn killed not a Jew but an African American -- security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns.

So which community was affected by this weird, virtually suicidal act? Was it the Jewish community or the black community?

The community that was the target of Von Brunn was the Jewish community; the race of the guard killed was mere happenstance. To von Brunn, the guard was merely an appendage of the Holocaust Museum. His criminal scenario was to affect the Jewish community, and any felony (including murder) flowing therefrom should (and is, to my understanding) considered under the original attempted felony.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 01:11 PM

That's nonsense, LH and you should konnw better. A racially aggravated assault is still an assault, but there are things about it that make it worse than one that is not aggravated. Compare a sexual assault, or are you one who thinks that rape is just another assault?

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: meself
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 01:07 PM

"Presbyterians, for example!"

??

I really have no idea what you're on about - and why do have this feeling that a coherent explanation is not going to be forthcoming?

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 12:14 PM

BB, I agree entirely with the writer's point of view on this. I have always regarded "hate" legislation as what he alludes to when he says,

"The real purpose of hate-crime laws is to reassure politically significant groups -- blacks, Hispanics, Jews, gays, etc. -- that someone cares about them and takes their fears seriously. That's nice. It does not change the fact, though, that what's being punished is thought or speech."

Right. I am opposed to such legislation, because it is fascist in intent. It's an attempt to enforce thought control on an entire population through fear. What you should charge people for is their actual crimes of commission (rape, murder, fraud, slander, robbery, assault, property damage, blackmail, traffic violations, etc)...NOT what they think and NOT for their expressed opinions, regardless of how unpopular their opinions are.

Every fascist and dictatorial regime yearns to silence all those who step outside the neatly drawn boundaries of the specific thoughts and opinions which the regime supports and espouses. Our society has been moving steadily in that direction under the guise of what is termed "liberalism", but it isn't really liberalism at all. It's fascism posing as liberalism.

Genuine and true liberalism does not suppress thought, it encourages it. It does not suppress freedom of speech and free expression of opinion, it encourages them. It does not say what opinions are legal or allowable or acceptable and what aren't, it allows all opinions. It does not punish people for breaking conventional ranks and being different from the sanctioned line of a ruling majority. It does not practice thought control.

Regimes which have practiced thought control very vigorously are regimes such as the Nazis, the Fascists in Italy and Spain, the present Iranian regime, the North Korean regime, the Communists under Stalin, Mao, and others, the Inquisition, indeed all dictatorships or fascist power structures. And they all did it supposedly for the "greater good", and with the most zealous righteousness. Our present "liberal" milieu in the West has largely been duped into supporting legal initiatives in the direction of thought control. In doing so, they are falling into a trap that they apparently don't see or appreciate. They are becoming what they thought they were fighting against.

It wouldn't be the first time that has happened by any means. It happens whenever a people's righteous zeal outstrips their awareness of someone else's right to express himself freely and to BE who he really is...without fear. That someone does not have to belong to a "visible minority" in order to need protection of his civil rights. EVERYONE in a free society needs his civil rights protected...not just those in the "politically significant groups (such as) -- blacks, Hispanics, Jews, gays, etc."

If a ruling order wishes to gradually exacerbate festering divisions and fears that exist between various sectors in society in order to provoke incidents which will eventually allow the government to bring down ever more draconian laws in the name of "national security"....then what better way to do it than to make some people in the society "more equal" than others? And that is what the present social order is doing. It's pandering to certain groups and demonizing others. This, I think, is either a deliberate strategem to "divide and conquer" the public more effectively...or it's the result of a generally stupid attitude that is getting seriously out of hand and has no idea what it's really doing to society.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Riginslinger
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 11:37 AM

Presbyterians, for example!

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: meself
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 09:15 AM

"some ancient religious cult that costs you money on a day-to-day basis"

Can you give an example? I'm unaware of any ancient religious cult that costs ME money on a day-to-day basis - is there one out there that I should be watching for?

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Riginslinger
Date: 05 Aug 09 - 07:14 AM

"If I shoot you because your point of view makes me angry that is a much less justifiable than if I shoot you as you attempt to kill my daughter with an axe."

            If you shoot me to take my wallet, or if you shoot me because I'm a member of some ancient religious cult that costs you money on a day-to-day basis, it seems to me you less justified to shoot for the wallet.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 05:28 PM

Rig, you have not understood the juridical nature of crime. You are as bad as Queen Victoria who refused to accept statute defining "Not guilty by reason of insanity" and insisted on it being re-worded to "Guilty but insane".

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Lox
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 05:14 PM

"Why would it matter what the perpetrator's motive was? He/she should be tried for the crime, not what they were thinking."

If I shoot you because your point of view makes me angry that is a much less justifiable than if I shoot you as you attempt to kill my daughter with an axe.

Both premeditated shoot to kill situations but with different intent.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 04:29 PM

Many, many of hate crimes are in effect terrorist acts. Or to put it another way, they are advertising of hate.

If they are not stepped on as a class, the advertising of ideological activity which they embody will tend to create copycat activity. Much more so (and intended much more so) than a garden variety murder for other reasons, or garden variety vandalism, or whatever. The society must not only take them seriously as such but be seen as seeing them as such.

It's clear to me, at least, that this raid on the Holocaust Museum was not motivated by black/white racism, but by antisemitism. The race of the guard killed was pure happenstance, regardless of the perpetrator's other attitudes on the race question.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Riginslinger
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 01:20 PM

Why would it matter what the perpetrator's motive was? He/she should be tried for the crime, not what they were thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: 3refs
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 01:19 PM

I'm not disagreeing, I'm suggesting, that motive is not a crime in itself. Some suggest that most crimes are commited without a motive. Not sure about that one either! If I doddle on someones wall, is it because I don't like him, or because I don't like what he's done. Only I know for sure and you can't prosecute me for what I think! Only what I do!

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 12:50 PM

I do not agree that "hate crime" is an inappropriate body of law.

The intent behind an unlawful killing affects the category of crime and the range of sentences.

The "mens rea" rules require different kinds of intent for conviction of different types of crimes.

It seems wholly right that an assault effected for hate purposes should be differently treated than one for other purposes.

Incitement to violence is properly criminal - so incitement for hatecrime reasons to violence should be specially treated.

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 11:08 AM

My point, exactly.

" It could be argued that there is a distinction between speech and odious crap. But who's to draw that line?"


I agree entirely

Subject: RE: BS: Hate laws
From: Amos
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 11:06 AM

It may have been off the beam to add the hate-crime charges to his bill of particulars, even though he was full of hate. But just for example, there is an order of magnitude difference between spray-painting your gang logo on the side of a building, and spray painting swastikas on the side of a synagogue, wouldn't you say?

While I can appreciate the attempt to make alegal distinction between the two, it is a very sticky pass to cut so close to the core issues of free thought and free speech. Similarly there are marginal laws against "fomenting" a riot or "inciting" which again trim the sheets on free speech. It could be argued that there is a distinction between speech and odious crap. But who's to draw that line?

A

Subject: BS: Hate laws
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Aug 09 - 09:04 AM

I do not usually agree with this columnist, but in this case I think he makes a valid point. Perhaps this thread might be a discussion of the laws that make specific thoughts a criminal act, and who it is that benefits from those laws.

From the Washington Post:

"The Folly of Hate-Crime Laws

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, August 4, 2009

James von Brunn, who is alleged to have opened fire and killed a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is apparently a consummate bigot. His former wife said that his hatred of blacks and Jews "ate him alive like a cancer," so it might seem appropriate that in addition to having been indicted last week for murder and gun-law violations, he was also charged with hate crimes. At age 89, he proves that you are never too old to hate.

He also proves the stupidity of hate-crime laws. A prime justification for such laws is that some crimes really affect a class of people. The hate-crimes bill recently passed by the Senate puts it this way: "A prominent characteristic of a violent crime motivated by bias is that it devastates not just the actual victim . . . but frequently savages the community sharing the traits that caused the victim to be selected." No doubt. But how is this crime different from most other crimes?

First, let us consider the question of which "community" von Brunn was allegedly attempting to devastate. He rushed the Holocaust museum, which memorializes the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis and their enablers. There could be no more poignant symbol for the Jewish community. Yet von Brunn killed not a Jew but an African American -- security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns.

So which community was affected by this weird, virtually suicidal act? Was it the Jewish community or the black community? Since von Brunn hated both, you could argue that it does not matter. But since I would guess that neither community now gives the incident much thought, the answer might well be "neither one." So what is the point of piling on hate crimes to what von Brunn has allegedly done? Beats me. He already faces -- at age 89, remember -- a life sentence and, possibly, the death penalty.

The real purpose of hate-crime laws is to reassure politically significant groups -- blacks, Hispanics, Jews, gays, etc. -- that someone cares about them and takes their fears seriously. That's nice. It does not change the fact, though, that what's being punished is thought or speech. Johns is dead no matter what von Brunn believes. The penalty for murder is severe, so it's not as if the crime is not being punished. The added "late hit" of a hate crime is without any real consequence, except as a precedent for the punishment of belief or speech. Slippery slopes are supposedly all around us, I know, but this one is the real McCoy.

Let us assume that the "community" is really affected by what we call a hate crime. I am Jewish. But even with von Brunn's attack, I am more affected by a mugging in my neighborhood that might keep me from taking a walk at night than I am by a shooting at the Holocaust museum. If there's a murder in a park, I'll stay out of it for months. If there's a rape, women will stay out of the park. If there's another and another, women will know that a real hater is loose. Rape, though, is not a hate crime. Why not?

I doubt that any group of drunken toughs is going to hesitate in their pummeling of a gay individual or an African American or a Jew on account of it being a hate crime. If they are not already deterred by the conventional penalties -- prison, etc. -- then why would additional penalties deter them? And if, in fact, they kept their mouths shut, refrained from the N-word or the F-word or the K-word, and simply made the beating or the killing seem one triggered by dissing or some other reason, then they would not be accused of hate -- merely of murder or some such trifle. If, though, they gave vent to their thoughts, they would be in for real trouble.

For the most part, hate-crime legislation is just a sop for politically influential interest groups -- yet another area in which liberals, traditionally sensitive to civil liberties issues, have chosen to mollify an entire population at the expense of the individual and endorse discredited reasoning about deterrence.

In von Brunn's case, the hate-crime counts are an obscenity. To suggest that the effects of this attack were felt only by the Jewish or the black communities -- and not, for instance, by your average Washington tourist -- ghettoizes both its real and purported victims. It's a consequence that von Brunn himself might applaud.
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