Letter from Blair Lee, IV-Playing the Hate Card...

[mamatutu]

This commentary is really about all of Maryland, but I put it here, since it is from the Baynet. Thought it was interesting.

Playing The Hate Card

"I hate designating certain criminal acts as “hate crimes” for two reasons. First, if someone commits a crime, who cares about the criminal’s mind-set? If you kill me, does it matter if you did it because you hate me or because you were stealing my car?

The crime is in the act, not the thought. Punishing someone’s evil thoughts isn’t allowed in America, except for these so-called hate crimes, where an extra sentence is tacked on because the crime was “hate-driven.”

Second, who decides what’s hateful? Americans invented hate crimes in the 1980s to punish crimes “motivated by hostility to the victim’s race, creed, gender, sexual identity or disability,” according to the dictionary. But hate, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder."

Rest of the letter: http://www.thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/viewstory/story_ID/38351

 

[BernieP]

I agree, the "hate crime" statutes are a form of preference to specific groups. For example, if personX assults me, it's assualt, if that same individual assualts a person who is say on the protected species list, there is the more heinous "hate crime" card thrown.
It says to me that my being assualted is of less importance than their case.

We won't even go into the reverse logic used in it's applicatoin. IMHO, it's not a charge the police would file, it's something a DA would add on as a political concern.