philosophy
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Joined: 2/15/2004 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MichiganHeadmast quote:
ORIGINAL: philosophy quote:
ORIGINAL: gman992 Hate crimes laws means that other person are more equal under the law than others...it punishes thought crimes as oppose to the actual crime. ...bollocks. Hate crimes are when someone targets a victim according to a preconceived bigotry. By your logic all convictions are thought crimes, ever heard of mens rea? Sooooo...... if the perp was an aids activist, and ran a charity for indigents, but killed someone just because he wanted their car, then what? He would be less culpable or less evil than someone who killed because he hated homosexuals? ........it's not about degrees of culpability. That is a black and white issue. The issue is how many crimes were committed. A hate crime is essentially a second crime layered over the first one. Society has the right to discriminate between crimes. To make different crimes have different punishments. Look up the history of the word Draconian for what happens when we don't. Given that, society also has the right to say that one murder (or any other crime) is more heinous than another. Otherwise we'd be using a set table of punishments, rather than allowing judges to rule on the relative merits of cases. Society, at this time, feels that bigotry is wrong.......and that when a crime is based on bigotry is merits a stronger sentence. So, back to your question. As to culpability....no, equally culpable of murder.....but the real life killer is also culpable of committing a crime on the basis of bigotry. As to evil......that's a metaphysical term and one that has no place in legality.
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