[AF] It's a Subaru legacy!

[Kevin Tekel]

Jerry Mathis wrote:
> For everyone's information, the law is intended to expand Federal
> jurisdiction to hate crimes, to include sexual preference, gender and
> gender identity, and the disabled. It gives the Feds the authority to
> step in if local officials fail to act.

It is also important to mention that hate crime laws address the intent of
the crime, not the status of the victim.

If you mug a guy on the street because you think he's gay, and he turns
out to actually be straight, then that is a hate crime, because the intent
of the crime was based on hatred of gay people, even if the victim was not
actually gay.

But if you mug a guy on the street because you need the money for drugs,
and he coincidentally turns out to be gay, then that is not a hate crime,
because the intent of the crime was not based on the victim's sexual
orientation.

And when considering these two scenarios, hate crime laws would not
necessarily force the punishment for the first scenario to be more severe
than in the second scenario.  The goal is simply to make sure that the
punishment in the first scenario would not be LESS severe than the second
scenario, if the judge or jury harbors their own prejudices against gay
people and sympathizes with the criminal.

I still remember one case where two teens met a guy at a gay bar and came
with him back to his apartment, where they proceeded to beat him nearly to
death and rob him.  Their defense was that they were the "victims of an
unwanted homosexual advance."  The small-town judge gave them seven years
for beating him up and another year for robbing him -- as if stealing a
guy's wallet is worth 1/8th of beating him so severely that it took years
of therapy before he could walk or talk again.  (BTW, this was a copycat
incident which took place just weeks after Matthew Shepard was murdered.)



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