"No, they are guilty of harassment, property damage, and possibly assault depending on the legal definition in the jurisdiction."
Well, according to the hate crime legislation Neiwert is referring to, they are guilty of commiting a hate crime.
Whether they should be guilty of commiting a hate crime (depending on your opinion of the worth of hate crime legislation) or whether that hate crime legislation itself should exist is debatable, and you can argue one way or the other. But it is clear that a violation of the existing hate crime legislation has occurred in the example given by Neiwert above, for the reasons he gives.
As for your implication that the underlying crimes of harrassment, property damager, and assault are enough, I refer you to the second half of an earlier Niewert quote I posted above.[1]
"The last paragraph does not support "hate crimes" legislation, it points out what a threat is."
A threat to whom exactly? To people who single out others based on their race, color, creed, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, religion or gender and commit harrassment, property damage, and assault "with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death"?
I sure hope they feel threatened. Because they need to realize that our society will not tolerate these sorts of actions, just as society has less tolerance for deliberate, premeditated killing than it does for unintentional, accidental killing.
Intent does matter, and that's what hate crime legislation is a recognition of.
I believe all "hate crime" legislation is bunk and sets up unfair interpretations of situations. The threat is to a fellow human and it should be punished in the same way no matter the classification of the victim. Equal means equal under the law. Anything else is a political stunt.
"it should be punished in the same way no matter the classification of the victim"
Hate crime legislation does not protect people based on "the classification of the victim". It protects everyone equally.
Maybe you missed it, but David Neiwert pointed this out in one of the quotes I pasted above.[1]
None of these laws specify the race or ethnicity or religion
of the victims -- rather, they are focused solely on the
motivations of the perpetrator. A person need not be actually
gay to be the victim of a gay-bashing hate crime; he need only
have been perceived as gay by someone who specifically set out
to assault homosexuals. This is only logical, since the
terroristic motivation of the assault is present in either
case.
Moreover, the laws protect everyone equally. Majority whites
are victims of bias crimes too, and every year there are over
a thousand prosecutions for such cases. (Indeed, the
definitive Supreme Court case, Wisconsin v. Mitchell, involved
a black man accused of fomenting a hate crime against a couple
of white teens.) Check the FBI statistics for yourself.
That is bunk, plain and simple. A crime against an accepted classification will get more play than one without. Look at the discussion on college admissions and Asian students to see how unfair this stuff is in real life. Anytime you venture too far into subjective criteria over objective leads to serious trouble.
Well, according to the hate crime legislation Neiwert is referring to, they are guilty of commiting a hate crime.
Whether they should be guilty of commiting a hate crime (depending on your opinion of the worth of hate crime legislation) or whether that hate crime legislation itself should exist is debatable, and you can argue one way or the other. But it is clear that a violation of the existing hate crime legislation has occurred in the example given by Neiwert above, for the reasons he gives.
As for your implication that the underlying crimes of harrassment, property damager, and assault are enough, I refer you to the second half of an earlier Niewert quote I posted above.[1]
"The last paragraph does not support "hate crimes" legislation, it points out what a threat is."
A threat to whom exactly? To people who single out others based on their race, color, creed, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, religion or gender and commit harrassment, property damage, and assault "with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death"?
I sure hope they feel threatened. Because they need to realize that our society will not tolerate these sorts of actions, just as society has less tolerance for deliberate, premeditated killing than it does for unintentional, accidental killing.
Intent does matter, and that's what hate crime legislation is a recognition of.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5622339