Considering the history of anti-lynching legislation in the U.S., one may see the need for adding sexual bias to hate crimes.  A movement to legislate anti-lynch federal law was first started in the early 1900’s, and this law was filibustered by the southern Democrats in the Senate during FDR’s administration.  A federal anti-lynch law was required because the local authorities, which may have been complicit in the lynching, often failed to prosecute anyone carrying out the lynching.

Now we can be certain that there are some elected sheriffs or prosecutors that may be hesitant to prosecute gender related crimes.  In their book it may be God’s retribution that caused the crime in the first place, i.e., that homo deserved what he got. By the way the U.S. Senate finally acknowledged their failure to pass anti-lynching legislation in 2005, one hundred years after not having done so.

And by the way, if anyone is naive enough to think I am simply paranoid about where hate crime legislation may lead in the USA, they haven’t been paying attention to Europe, where today you can be charged in many countries for merely speaking in a critical way about immigrants or various religions.  Many leftists in the USA are working to remake America in the image of socialist European countries where personal freedoms take a back seat to multiculturalism and collectivism.

Those leftists are going to be in for a very rude awakening someday, when mainstream America awakens from the everyday distractions of consumerism and pop culture to find their freedom and cultural heritage under immediate and dire
threat. Then Americans will inevitably rally again to water the tree of Liberty, as they have in the past.

RobertinWestbury, I’ll try and restate my points so you won’t miss them so badly this time.

The ACTION should be the crime, not the THOUGHT, bias, or beliefs behind it.  Assault is the action, the crime. If I am beaten up because someone thinks I stole their girlfriend, or I got a job they wanted, (aka PERCEIVED SLIGHT) or I was just a random target for them to vent their rage about something else (their sports team lost), that is assault and it prosecuted as such.

By contrast, under ‘hate crime’ laws,  If the SAME ACTION of assault is taken against another, not for the previous reasons given, but instead for the reason that the assaulted are gay or black or whatever, and ADDITIONAL charges are brought for ‘hate crime’, then that is criminalization of the thought, of the ‘hate’ that precipitated it.  It is the same action of assault, but is considered worse because of what the attacker was thinking when they did it.  That is thought crime, plain and simple.

The very title ‘hate crime’ spells it out. The HATE, the thought, is the crime being targeted, as a separate offense from the action taken.  What this inevitably leads to is prosecution of thought WITHOUT the action. Prosecuting of speech, of free assembly of people, as criminal, based on the same perception of illegal ‘hate’ or thought. Today we add extra charges to assault because the victim was gay, eventually we arrest people just for protesting against illegal immigration, or religious extremism, or gay marriage, because it can be defined by some as motivated by hate, and therefore is a ‘hate crime’.

These laws are a slippery slop towards suspension of the Constitutional freedoms that many Americans consider to be sacred.  Fortunately, those who value these freedoms most, with family roots in the American revolution, are also the ones who are generally armed and willing to defend Liberty when it becomes necessary.

Write me off as a Republican, a Bush supporter, and small minority if you like. You are wrong on all counts.  I am not threatening anyone with violence. I am telling you it is practically inevitable if we continue down this road. Tyranny over thought and free speech will not be tolerated in this country.  Freedom will be defended, by ballot or by bullet.

One more thing…  I said:

“The white heterosexual majority has never been targeted with violence because they were white heterosexuals.”

I doubt anyone has been targeted for being heterosexual, but there have been people who have suffered violence for being white.  Rare, but true.  Reverse discrimination is very real.  But guess what….  those are hate crimes based on race as well.  And those few white people who endure this kind of violence are as protected under hate crime statutes and anyone else.

Should someone ever be targeted with violence because they are straight, the same standard would apply because being straight is a bonafide sexual orientation…

I meant to say the 20% of Americans who are the loonies on the far right.. .you know, the ones that consider Palin and Michelle Bachman to be great leaders…  those who still consider George Bush a great president…  the fringe.  Those are the types that would argue that hate crimes criminalize thoughts. 

It wasn’t thoughts that killed Matthew Shepherd.  The interview of one of the men who killed him said they targeted him because he was gay…..  It was their actions, Frank….

Frank is blind to reality.  The white heterosexual majority has never been targeted with violence because they were white heterosexuals.  There are crimes of violence against minorities that is based solely on the minority status. 

And that violence does not equate to a ‘perceived slight.’  That is just a childish statement.  Hate Crime charges have never been brought against anyone for a slight… 

The idea that this criminalizes thought is stupid and as stupid statements generally go - totally baseless.  Nobody knows the thoughts of another.  Nobody is criminalized for a thought.  It’s when they put those ‘thoughts’ to action that violence against another occurs. 

Bloody revolution you promise to anyone who dares to stand up to the violence of bigotry and hatred.  Well, I have confidence that a majority of Americans would be on our side if it ever came to that.  And should it ever come to that, then let it come.  Most Americans are fairminded enough that the 20% of the loonies on the far right will be terribly surprised at how outnumbered they are..

@Frank

Having grown up on the streets of a major U.S. city, I can tell you that hate crimes are real.  As a young teenagers, we thought it would be cool to roll a few queers, so we would roam the streets looking for victims.  If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and you didn’t look right, guess what.

I think it is correct to actively discourage this type of behavior.

Another nail in the coffin of freedom in the good ol’ USA. 

This legislation canonizes the idea that a random assault on me for the sake of violence, or out of revenge for some perceived slight,  is apparently not as bad as the same violent assault on someone else because they are a minority, or gay.

That amounts to unequal protection by the law. More\ importantly, it is criminalization of thought.

Keep celebrating the growing list of thought crimes if you like, folks.

Just keep in mind this road inevitably leads to bloody revolution, and those who love liberty in this country are far, far better armed than you.

About time…