Belkira the Tulip wrote:
You'd have to look at the history of hate crime legislation. It was started because people were trying to stop others from federally protected actions, like voting. Then stuff like what happened to Matthew Shepard happened, and people said, "Dude, this isn't ok. We need to stop people from doing things like this to intimidate other people. That's just wrong." So instead of writing new legislation, which is tedious, time consuming, and I can only imagine expensive, they decided to amend a current law to include stuff like gender and sexual orientation. Then they removed the "federally protected activity" jargon.
The lines aren't arbitrary at all. If anything, your idea of just making laws to protect hypothetical people in hypothetical situations is what would be arbitrary. Like I said before, as far as I can tell, the law is as all-encompassing as it needs to be right now. No one is getting any more protection than anyone else. No one is saying that one group is more important than another like you're trying to pretend it does.
The lines aren't arbitrary at all. If anything, your idea of just making laws to protect hypothetical people in hypothetical situations is what would be arbitrary. Like I said before, as far as I can tell, the law is as all-encompassing as it needs to be right now. No one is getting any more protection than anyone else. No one is saying that one group is more important than another like you're trying to pretend it does.
I don't know what to say to any of this. None of your claims here are even remotely substantiated. You saying something is the case doesn't make it that way. "No one is getting any more protection than anyone else"? Why...because you say so? I've been arguing for pages now to prove just that. If you don't get why by now, then I give up. You're just going to think whatever you want to think.
And an appeal to the difficulty and expense of amending a law? I know the death knell of someone's argument when I hear it. We're talking hypotheticals here...nothing is going to get changed either way. If the situation is wrong, then it's still wrong, even if it'll take a little effort to fix it. The whole thing is kind of irrelevant But heck, one of the whole points of congress is to write and amend laws. Might even be cheaper in the long run to change it once and be done with it, than perpetually amending it when each new group comes under an attack "trend".
Belkira wrote:
Surely you can see how it happening to a single person is not the same as people across the country being targeted in an effort to intimidate a group of people.
That doesn't make the former dismissable, though. That single person still matters, and they still deserve equal protection under the law to that whole big group. We should not have a hierarchy of importance of people, whether it be by population or by any other means.
Belkira wrote:
Eske, Star Breaker wrote:
I don't know specifics, but I know that they exist. Since I'm arguing the principle of the thing, that's all I need.
Ok. But I'd still like to know for my own opinion to be better informed.
If you'd like to better inform yourself, you can google as well as I can. Here's a quick non-specific one from the wikipedia page on US hate crime laws though.
Quote:
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, enacted in 28 U.S.C. § 994 note Sec. 280003, requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of any person. In 1995, the Sentencing Commission implemented these guidelines, which only apply to federal crimes.
Edited, Oct 6th 2010 7:06pm by Eske
Keep on punching the monkey. Insisting people gave up because they didn't have an argument is certainly easier then actually addressing their arguments.