The whole idea of 'hate crime' is fascist and should be abolished. It is a way to control people by letting the state prosecute not evident behavior but supposed intent. But since there is no objective wya to measure hate here, the law is pure subjective statist control power applied at the will of the state or judges.

Thus for exmaple no anti-Christian speech, often rooted in a deep hate, is ever prosecuted, and no nati-Bush speech or even acts were either under this law. But such laws are oftne used to silence opponants by accusing their motive of being 'hate' when in fact ther is relaly no hate at all invloved in what they are saying.

Hate crime laws are a soft form of political tyrnany. The charge is leveled that the operson is acting in hate in order to avoid having to relaly deal with what they are actually saying, it allows logic and fact to be dismissed at the will of the self proclaimed guardians of the good.

Vaya con Dios ~

In murder, or crime, degrees of guilt do not refer to motivation, but to delibertness as evidenced by actions.

Perhaps a better argument you might get is to say that ALL crime against eprsons is in some sense a hate crime, for any deliberate harming of persons will include hate for them, depersonalizing them and seeing them as somehow unworthy of anythign but hate. In effect, there is no such thign as a person crime that is nto a hate crime as well, at elast to some large degree.

The problem with any seperation of crimes dependant on what we feel is the motive is that this is radiclaly subjecitve, and that sort of thing always leads to the rule of men rather than the rule of law. It is also never truly applied with an even hand, crimes like disrupting a church service with screams and obscentities saying one hates these folks are passed over with a wink and nod, but if in the sermon the pastor teaches classicla ethical norms apply in this area he can be accused of hate speech,e vne when the whole point of the sermon was to reject any hate toward such sinenrs.

So the only viable 'hate crime' law would be to say all crime against persons and all property crime that takes from them are all hate crime, which rather shows how lame and lawless the idea itself is. In the real world all it does is gets special privledges for those who can control or game the legal system. .

Motive is always invloved in crime, it is ultimatly not accessible to human evaluation, the best we can do is look at evidence that may suggest planning and so forth.

Actually, many who oppose hate crime laws do so precisely because we do understnad just what this sor tof law is. It is a grant of special status ot some victems not given to other victems of the same sorts of criminal actions.Bu crteaong special; victem catagories one first of all presumes any crime agaisn tthem is of a specific sort, which in any specific case may or may not be valid, and then denies equal access to the judical process top those who are not so identified, what access they lave is limtied and less than those special classes.

The closest American analogy is 'Jim Crow'laws. That is, the special class of whites called homosexuals or artists or liberals,  and the black  underclass of say Christians' or 'conservatives' , get treated differently. The elite class gets off from criems the underclass can't get away with, and the underclass is guilty of crimes, or punished more severly,  than the elite class,e specially if the crime gets directed or seems to be directed by the low to the above. We as a nation acheived a great thing when we got rid of Jim Crow laws, and now the left wants to bring them back.

Don

<<How come I never here Christians complain about hate-motivated  crimes before gays were added?  What about the free speech issues there? How come you don't fight it  or even complain about it until gays are added equally as Christians?>>

Good question.

There is a free speech and freedom of religion issue that motivates Christians to object to adding homosexuality to the list.

Those Christians who hold that the Bible teaches that homosexual behavior is sinful (like stealing, adultery, drunkenness, etc.) could be (more realistically, will be) charged with inciting violence against homosexuals by preaching what they hold to be divinely revealed truth in accordance with their religious tradition.

Those who hate Christianity (like yourself, the entire ACLU, NAMBLA, the porn industry, et. al.) will be quick to use the laws to harass and intimidate individual Christians, clergy, churches and religious organizations with lawsuits which the Christians will have to defend against even if they are proven to be a violation of the Christians constitutional right to the free exercise of religion and of freedom of speech and press.

Thus the Christian haters (which is, apparently an acceptable "hate-crime") can be used to bankrupt small churches and individuals. Why should Christians be concerned about such a potentiality? Is it just a boogey-man?

The ACLU has for decades carried on a war against the Boy Scouts Of America for not allowing homosexuals to be scout leaders in order to protect the boys from sexual abuse. Even though they lost at the Supreme Court, the ACLU continues to impede and obstruct Boy Scout activities at the local level through law suits because individual troops do not have the funds to defend against them.

Thus the pro-homosexual ACLU has demonstrated that it has no hesitation to use the law to further their communist agenda which includes ridding society of any vestige of religion. "Hate-crime" is simply another tool provided to them by socialist politicians and the activist judgesthey appoint and which they will employ to attack vulnerable Christian organizations.

My view is not that we should not add sexual orientation to the “hate-crime” laws ( if we're going to have hate-crime laws then add sexual orientation to the list) but that we should get rid of the “hate-crime” laws all together.

jim