Do you think there should be hate crime laws?

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The funny thing is that the bus might say "I have nothing against you having diagnosis with autism, I only dislike the fact that you were DOING item X. In your case, you were doing item X because of autism; but it doesn't matter, since I would fire anyone who does item X, whether it is due to autism or not. The act of doing item X disturbs others for such and such reasons, and thats why I fire anyone -- autistic or not -- who does X".

This by the way brings a good point. In order to single out people who "truly" hate autistics you have to literally find someone who hates the way the word "autism" sounds, and doesn't even care about any actual autistic behaviors. That would be quite silly wouldn't it. I guess probably it is being assumed that since racism is "wrong" you can't possibly arrive at "wrong" conclusion by means of logical thinking; thus, whatever "racist" conclusion you came up with should be entirely disconnected from anything else. In case of autism, you have to ''hallucinate'' a sign on a wall ''autism=bad'' without anything else that would prompt you to dislike any autistic behavior. This, in fact, would be the only way a clear line between "hate" and "other motives" can be drawn. A "hate" has to be something completely disconnected from other beliefs or experiences a person has, and should be something that a person merely "hallucinates" out of the blue. Now the logical steps that lead to above thinking are as follows:

A. Racism is wrong
B. In order to reach wrong conclusion you need to make logical fallacy
C. In order to make logical fallacy you have to make an assumption that is logically disconnected from everything else that you know
D. The place of "logical disconnect" will be the "line" between your "racist" views and all "other" views

Now, I claim that the mistake that they made was in part C. The "logical disconnect" is only one out of many different examples of faulty logic. Far more common example would be "false logical link". Thus, the racist belief of an individual IS in fact connected to ALL OTHER beliefs -- and a lot of the latter are "good" beliefs -- BUT "the connecting lines" between any given "racist" belief and any given "good" belief involve "false logical links" at some points along the way. Thus, we can identify these "false logical links" and use them as a definition of a "boundary" between a "region of racist beliefs" and a "region of good beliefs" a given person has. The only problem, however, is that in real life we are using fuzzy logic. Thus, most of the links most people make are "fuzzy" at least to some extend. So in order to properly draw the above stated line we would require some of the links in the racist' mind to be "significantly more fuzzy" than other links. But this might simply not be the case. And if all of the links a racist uses are equally fuzzy, then who is to say which beliefs are racist and which are not? Thus, there is no way of saying whether the idea of firing someone for the disractive behavior that simply HAPPENED to be the symptom of autism is, in fact, racism against autistics or not.

Also think of math test. A bad student would use false logical links to reach a wrong answer. If the person is capable of coming up with one wrong answer this is probably a good indication that they are capable of coming up with thousands of other wrong answers. So the concept of hate crime is like saying "a student who arrived at this specific wrong answer should lose a lot more points than the students arrived at other kinds of wrong answers". In real life, of course, wrong answer == crime == real life damage to someone. Hence, if "whatever it is you are thinking" lead you to commit a crime you go to jail; if "whatever it is you are thinking" lead you to get wrong answer on a test you lose points. The question of wheter or not your thinking falls within some special "forbidden territory" should be non-issue. In fact the very notion of "forbidden territory" teaches people NOT to think, thus making them more prone to having wrong answers.

Angry Canadian indeed. Free speech is something I hold very close to my heart, it is the corner stone of any free society.

Not being able to say something because it might offend somebody undermines the entire thing.

There's a difference between a crime of greed where the perpetrator says, 'I don't give a damn about poor people,' and a crime of hatred and control where the perpetrator says, 'All you other X people better keep your f*****g heads down, or the same will happen to you.' Not that simple hate speech (unless it is threatening) also does not have the effect of controlling the target population.

if a crackhead steals a tv, beats up a bookie and hijacks a truck, he'll get charged with those crimes. If Vinny the made-man does it he can also get charged with racketeering or a RICO violation. Because society has decided that organized crime is unusually offensive and dangerous Just as it decided that violent bigots or terrorists get a special charge. We had trouble with them and made up special laws just to stick it to them.

None of this stuff came form Moses. It's society putting numbers and names to acts it doesnt like.

Should people be persecuted because of their opinions or should they be persecuted because of what they -do-.

If an act was committed with mens rae (evil intent) then the opinion that ultimately lead to the formulation of men rae should not add to the crime committed because of mens rae. If A deliberately killed B wrongfully and without justification then A should be punished for murder after being tried and convicted on evidence showing 1. he did the deed and 2 he did it deliberately and with forethought. His political or racial opinions matter not a bit. Wrongful killing and racial bias are orthogonal. One can kill wrongfully without a racial bias and one can be racially bias without killing anyone. Two separate and distinct things.

ruveyn

ruveyn

Because it has a more widespread negative effect. It dehumanises an entire community and makes them afraid. It's murder + mass intimidation, which is obviously worse than murder alone.



I agree, but this isn't the point. We should be talking about what ought to be done if we know for certain that a crime is a hate crime. Sometimes it really is obvious. The killer might shout abuse, or leave a note. Recently there was a murder in the US where the criminal left a note saying "Go back to your own country, terrorist." That's a hate crime.



Suppose that it's a murder. The victim's dead. The victim doesn't care one way or the other. But the community is more negatively affected if it was a hate crime.



Not true. Manslaughter can involve intentional killing, or at least intentional attacking-without-caring-about-the-results. It's all about mitigating factors, and it is precisely the same sort of distinction that you can draw between a hate crime and a non-hate crime. It's not a matter of "did he mean to do it?" It's a matter of "why did he do it?"



If you're talking about rape, I wouldn't be so eager to assume that rape is about lust. It's often a way of expressing misogyny. So I think that some kinds of rape should indeed be classified as hate crime. This is something that is being discussed in many countries at the moment.



That's a gigantic stretch. If someone kills a rich guy while yelling stuff that demonises the rich in some obvious way, then I think that it could be called a hate crime, sure. But I don't care very much about protecting the rich. They don't need our help.

Sure: a murder with a racial motivation also has the added effect on the rest of the victim's community. The person who is convicted not only of murder, but also with a hate crime, is being punished for the effect on the entire community as well as for the effect on the victim.

I'm against the idea. IMO, murdering someone for money, or for sexual gratification, is just as 'low' a motive as murdering someone out of hate. In a way it's actually worse since racial hatred tends to stem from ignorance rather than callousness or malice and thus imo, is in a certain sense more forgivable, especially if committed with a group because it's always easier to do bad things in groups since you have the 'moral reassurance' of other people.