Hi there. Welcome to the board. I'm doing a lot of surfing today so I'm gonna jump right in and give my rebuttal to your post... -- Welcome To The Crzy House

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Date Posted: 12:01:16 06/19/03 Thu
Author: Drew Greyfox
Subject: Hi there. Welcome to the board. I'm doing a lot of surfing today so I'm gonna jump right in and give my rebuttal to your post...
In reply to: Lamar 's message, "Adding to the elephant." on 22:45:20 06/18/03 Wed

Every violent crime should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of what motivated the perpetrator of the crime. This can and should be done under existing civil rights laws as Geoff stated above.

Yes they should, but we have seen a lot of evidence that violent crimes against minorities are investigated and prosecuted less because of prejudice, racism etc. In some cases the victims have more reason to fear the police then the criminals do because the police share their racism and prejudices and allow it to obstruct justice. If all things were equal then every anti-gay crime would be investigated and punished to the full extent of the law without any regard for the sexual orientation of the victim. But all things are not equal when it comes to gay people. This is nothing new.

Giving any group of minorities protection under federal hate crime laws gives these groups extra consideration that is not warranted. No crime victim is more important than any other crime victim.

You are right that no one victim should be any more important then any other victim. Unfortunately, some victims (especially gay people) are often considered less important then other victims. And in the case of hate crimes, extra consideration is warranted, as these crimes not only harm the victim but serve to terrorize an entire group of people, basically putting them on notice that they could be next.

And studies show that hate crime laws do not prevent bias crime.

Preventing crime is not the sole purpose of any law. Murder is illegal, but it does not prevent thousands of murders every year. Do you therefore believe that laws against murder are unnecessary or ineffective? It would be nice if hate crimes laws would automatically prevent bias motivated crimes, but nobody really expects that to happen. What we do expect hate crimes laws to do is ensure the crimes are investigated and prosecuted properly, not by Sherriff Goober Redneck who hates gay people and thinks they all deserve it anyway.

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