Oh, Washington Post, how many foibles can you make with the gays this week? First there was you letting Tony Perkins use your paper to spread hate rhetoric, then there was your dumb response to it (ban reporters from responding to critics on Twitter). And then there’s op-ed columnist Richard Cohen making the foolish argument that adding hate crimes to the penal code is almost as bad as the hate crimes themselves. Dumbass.
Discussing the string of anti-gay violence in NYC (the Bronx torture, the West Village bar attack, the Chelsea distict assault), Cohen wrote yesterday, “Almost as bad as hate crimes themselves is the designation. It is a little piece of totalitarian nonsense, a way for prosecutors to punish miscreants for their thoughts or speech, both of which used to be protected by the Constitution (I am an originalist in this regard). It is not the criminal act alone that matters anymore but the belief that might have triggered the act. For this, you can get an extra five years or so in the clink.”
Wow, that is quite the disastrous argument to make right there! The designation of a violent act as a hate crime is almost as bad as the crime itself?
No.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Here is the difference: The designation of a hate crime is when somebody is punished additionally because that violence was aimed at a minority simply because the victim was a minority. An actual hate crime is when you are forced to strip naked, sodomized with a plunger, burned on your penis and nipple with a lit cigarette, sliced with a box cutter, and beaten senseless because some stupid wannabe gangster thinks you’re gay.
One is certainly worse than the other.
Tellingly, Cohen’s logic fail is on par with an undergrad at Rutgers University, who tried making a similar argument in the wake of Tyler Clementi’s death in the student newspaper The Daily Targum: That criticism of the newspaper’s outrage was, ahem, almost as bad as the vicious bullying waged against Clementi that led to his death.
Brutus
I agree that putting someone in jail for five years (which, by the way, is a LONG time, especially in state prison) might not seem as bad as the atrocious physical attacks committed.
But hate crime designations are still thought crimes. Murder, for example is murder. It shouldn’t matter WHY you did it beyond whether you did it intentionally or negligently.
Baxter
This guy has obviously overstated his case in a stupid way, but he’s correct that hate crime legislation is thought crime legislation and should have no place in a free society.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
I think I would love to give this asshat a mouth full of bloody chicklets………And I hate that freaking silly ass toupe on his dumbass head……..
Alex
His argument is interesting, even though he takes it places that aren’t just.
In a court situation, hate crime legislation gives judges and juries the ability to met out extra punishment in especially heinous cases. Isn’t there something different between a murder that takes place during a shootout and a murder that is the product of prolonged and painful torture? And isn’t the difference between manslaughter,attempted murder and murder thought legislation? If I run someone over in my car and kill them, my intentions determine whether I get four or 25 years of prison (manslaughter vs. murder).
Greg from Denver
It looks like we need a 101 class here. The Intent of the law is not to make thought a crime, but to realize that sometimes an attack on an individual member of a group is made to send a message to the whole group. You don’t burn a cross on someone’s lawn to destroy the grass. You are sending a message that certain types of people are not welcome here and if you are a member of a certain group you could meet with violence at anytime, so get your ass out of my neighborhood, town or state. Likewise beating up and breaking a few gay boys skulls is meant to send a message that you are in danger if you are gay and dare live in this area. Enhancements for hate crimes are meant to recognize that the crime is not perpetrated just against an individual, but against a whole community.
Alan
Setting some wood on fire in a neighbor’s lawn is vandalism. Shaping into a cross and burning on a black neighbor’s lawn is a hate crime.
Painting an “X” on a store vs. painting a swastika on a synagogue.
A hate crime is fundamentally an attempt to intimidate a group.
Devon
Technically the only thing that separates a run of the mill spree killer from a terrorist is their thought process. A spree killer does what he does because he went goddamn crazy, a terrorist does what he does because he wants to inspire fear in order to make a political statement.
So by right winger logic, terrorism is just a thought crime.
Brutus
@Greg from Denver: Delivering a message, however, is constitutionally protected. Especially when it’s political and society finds the message distasteful or unpopular.
Sean
@Brutus Delivering a threat is not constitutionally protected speech, and that is what is at issue here (hate crimes laws in the US do not include “hate speech”, for the very reason that you mentioned).
Because of this, a crime that contains an implicit threat to a wider community is different from a crime directed solely towards an individual.
Pete
Hands of free speech you queers! You want to do to us what you did to Greece, Rome and Weimar-Nazi Germany? Transform us into facist, socialist, warmongering, woman-and-feminine-homosexuals repressing, militarist, homoerotic hellholes?!?
Kev C
Richard Cohen, please report to a police station for thought crimes. Your punishment will be to read your own weekly column.
ForeverGay
Where was Richard Cohen when religion or race was placed on hated crimes legislation? Oh, he’s Jewish so that’s all good. Where was Richard Cohen when the Bush administration signed law which gave longer sentences for terrorists? Oh, he’s Jewish so he is all for that. From SNL to Sasha Baron Cohen to Richard Cohen there is a line of thought among Jews to hold anything Jewish beyond reproach while looking down on all non-Jews.
Chuck
Hate crimes have nothing to do with ‘thoughts.’ What they are is a violent crime that not only affects the victim but is also intended to intimidate a minority group.
There, two sentences and the idiot logic of the first 2 comments is dispelled.
Brutus
@Sean: An implicit threat is not the type of threat that is not constitutionally protected.
Brutus
@Chuck: Except it’s not, because yours is the idiot logic.
One sentence!
Chuck
@Brutus: Excuse me, but I’m not the allegedly straight person monitoring a gay site in order to defend perpetrators of hate crimes. That makes you the most loathsome creature on earth. If you are straight, why are you reading this site? If you are gay, why defend violence against your own kind?
DavyJones
I’m gay, and I’m against “Hate Crimes”. If a person commits a crime, they deserve to be punished for that crime. They should not be punished because they “hate” someone, or an idea.
I don’t like that the guy 3 doors down from me is a bigot; but in a free society he has every right to be. If he gets it in his mind one day to kill me for being gay he should be charged as a murderer, and punished as such. The fact that I’m gay, and that he hates gays, should have no bearing on the degree of punishment.
The same is true for assault, or vandalism, etc
Now if someone is threatening me, the fact that they “hate gays” might be relevant in that it gives credence to “assault” but the crime is still “assault”. Not a “hate crime” Or at least in a free society it should be.
Why, do I feel that way? (Beyond the fact that I think “free” should mean free for everyone, not just those who agree with me). Well because one day I might accidentally push my shopping cart a bit too hard toward the shopping cart return area, and it might bounce off and hit a black guys car, and I don’t want someone saying I did it because I hate black people and charging me with a hate crime. (DISCLAIMER: I don’t hate black people, it’s an example.)
DavyJones
@Chuck: A hate crime is, by definition: a crime in which the perpetrators ‘hate’ for the victim’s supposed is a factor in causing them to be targeted.
Thus it is by definition a crime based on what the person was “thinking” al-la a thought crime. Why someone chooses their ‘targets’ shouldn’t be a factor in their charges; because what you are essentially doing there is saying it is illegal to hate someone.
DavyJones
That should say:
*victim’s supposed {race, gender, creed, sexual orientation, etc} is a factor *
scott ny'er
@DavyJones: This and the previous post… it’s the first time someone articulated your POV in a way that I could understand and actually makes me think… you have a good point. I’ve read others who are all hate crime is stupid, a crime is a crime. But I get it now.
A crime is wrong and should be punished. Whatever motivation may be behind it. I wonder if “hate crime” law was put into place tho because perps were getting off due to anti-LGBT issues. Or something like that.
Chuck
@DavyJones: I already gave you the definition. You can say your wrong one till you’re blue, but that doesn’t make it so. Again, nothing to do with ‘thoughts’ no matter how many times Rush told you that, he lied.
Once again class, it is a crime that is intended to intimidate a minority group thereby affecting not only the victim but an entire group of people.
No thought involved, you should be used to that concept.
Henry
His argument is just plain wrong. Juries have always considered motivation and premeditation when deciding on a sentence. A murder that was planned because of motives of money or bigotry, for example, is usually judged much more harshly than a crime of passion.
scott ny'er
ok. I just read all the posts and Alex, Greg and Alan explained my questions away. Brutus, go read those posts.
scott ny'er
whoops, I meant Davy, not Brutus.
John (CA)
White male conservatives are automatically against hate crimes legislation because they perceive, quite correctly, that it was specifically designed with them in mind.
Although the scope of the law has since been expanded by Congress to include a wide variety of offenders and victims, it was originally conceived for a very narrow purpose. It was a weapon that the federal government used to break the Klu Klux Klan’s stranglehold on the legal systems of certain states. Of course, they never mention that part. The other part they always conveniently forget is the fact that hate crimes were a sub-section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Because, as Rand Paul found out in Kentucky, being for freedom of speech sounds a lot better than “lets repeal the Civil Rights Act.”
Murder and rape were, and still are, primarily crimes adjudicated by state trial courts. Technically, the federal government doesn’t have the authority to put a person on trial for murder unless the act itself involved a federal agent, threatened national security, or happened on federal land. Before 1964, this effectively meant a white man could do anything to anyone in the South without any legal consequence. Klan members were judges, lawyers, and members of the police force in many of these states. And they made sure the trials always resulted in an acquittal or mistrial.
Hate crimes changed all that by listing some federally protected activities (e.g. voting, going to school) and then saying the federal government can directly prosecute crimes related to those activities if they were committed to intimidate a suspect class from exercising their rights. This effectively limited the power of corrupt judges and prosecutors in Mississippi, Alabama, etc. to determine the outcome of any particular case. Originally, the enumerated classes were race, color, national origin, and religion. Congress added the disabled to the list in 1990, women in 1994, and LGBT folks in 2009.
DavyJones
@Chuck: See this is a good example of why I think laws should stay out of interpreting other peoples thoughts. You know nothing about me except that I am gay and I happen to disagree with you on this topic; and suddenly You’ve decided that I’m a thoughtless Died in the Wool Republican who hangs on to Rush Limbaugh’s every word. And whats more, you dismiss my entire opinion out of hand without even considering it, you’re so sure that you’re absolutely correct that you feel the need to accentuate it by being a condescending jack ass… How sad.
The definition I gave comes from the legislation, meaning it is the definition; there’s no really debate about that. Go Google it.
I agree that burning a cross on someone’s lawn is certainly not intended to simply burn the grass; I agree that it is intended to ‘send a message’ to an entire group of people. However I also think there are plenty of laws on the books already which thoroughly cover and provide punishments for such a crime. Including assault, if it can be proven that burning a cross on someone’s lawn constitutes a credible threat of further injury. (which I wouldn’t think would be too difficult).
Similarly heinous attacks on an individual because they’re gay, are also thoroughly covered by existing laws.
Premeditation (while yes it does have something to do with what the person is thinking) is different, and is considered, because it proves intent. Billy didn’t just happen to run Jack over, he’d planned it out before hand; so that’s a worse crime. And a bias toward a particular group might be used to prove intent, I can understand that. But that’s not the issue.
jason
Richard Cohen is a little man with a pea-sized brain. His notion that hate crimes legislation is an attack on thought is sheer nonsense. Hate crimes legislation is merely designed to attack actual physical crimes that are motivated by prejudice.
Perhaps Cohen might sing a different tune if the perpetrator were a Nazi and the victim was a Cohen. He’s Jewish, isn’t he?
DR
@Alex:
That’s why sentencing codes have aggravating and mitigating factors, to account for the nature of the crime. We already have a way to hold perpetrators accountable for especially heinous crimes involving prolonged torture (to use your example) and sentence that perp harsher than someone who walked up to a stranger, popped him in the mouth and took his wallet.
In PA, prolonged torture is actually a specific aggravating factor juries must consider when deliberating whether or not to impose the death penalty.
Queerty is on the wrong side of the law on this one as far as I’m concerned. There are schemes in place to address this, we don’t need more crimes.
ousslander
so being
“forced to strip naked, sodomized with a plunger, burned on your penis and nipple with a lit cigarette, sliced with a box cutter, and beaten senseless because some stupid wannabe gangster thinks you’re gay.” is more heinous and deserves more time than if these psychos had just picked a random person off the street?
Almost all crime is hate crime, attacking someone because they are percieved weak or other. it sends a message to the entire community that you arenot safe and we will hurt/rob you too.
Sceth
I don’t have an opinion right now on the constitutional purity of hate crime legislation, but while one decides what judgment to cast, it helps to realize that things are not quite what certain people call them:
Legislation against hate crimes is not legislation against hatred. It’s legislation against terror.