Parrot Posted April 21, 2007 Report Posted April 21, 2007 As I understand it, the idea behind legislating hate crimes is that racism and other forms of hate are so destructive that they need extra punishment. Do I have that correct? I have a big problem with this way of handling things. For me, a crime is a crime, to the law motivation should not matter. If you kill a person, he's not any less dead if you killed him for his money instead of because he's black. Since when should the law make any sort of consideration for what you were thinking at the time? Isn't that dangerously close to charging somebody for a "Thought Crime"? As a society we should definitely not tolerate racism or other forms of hate. However, legally shouldn't we be primarily concerned with determining the facts of the crime? Shouldn't punishment be decided based on what the person did, rather than what he was thinking? Quote
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