Hate Crime legislation exists in the US and has for some time too but I am not going to comment on the legal ramifications in a system with which I am not familiar. I have worked for the criminal justice system in the UK though and have seen the real impact that the drafting of and prosecution using such a law can and has had.

Hate crimes are not thought crimes. You are entitled to your opinion however bigoted, ill informed and ignorant it may be.

Motive is, and always has been, an important factor in criminal prosecutions and pretending that it is irrelevant, is not a good enough argument. The simple difference between manslaughter and murder is probably the most striking and obvious, but motive and intent are often crucial in securing a conviction. E.G


Someone smashes a window.

Should everyone who smashes a window be treated equally?

A kid who accidentally hits a cricket ball through his neighbours window ?

A person with previous history of breaking into properties breaks a window of a shop intent on stealing what is inside.

A heavy user of Class A drugs who sustains their habit with burglary knowingly breaks the window of a pensioners house intent on stealing personal belongings to sustain their habit

A rapist breaks the window of a young single women he has followed home

A jealous and harassing ex husband breaks the window of his ex-wife on hearing her and her new man are inside

A prominent member of a holocaust denying anti-jewish group breaks the window of a synagogue..............yet again

The crime in all these cases barring the accidental cricket ball is criminal damage but the intent and it's intended consequences are very different.

So intent is important but so is the fact that we live in democratic societies in which the judgement of people purely on their birth characteristics or choices in life is recognised as being discriminatory.

The victim of a crime should not be made to feel that the fact that they were picked on merely for being disabled,the wrong race, religion or sub-culture is irrelevant when the perpetrator has made it abundantly clear that is the motive for the attack. The message the law is supposed to send it is pretty clear in it's wording. HATE CRIME is often premeditated, planned and concurrent. The offender needs to know that the rest of society does see a difference between having a fight when a couple of parties have had too much to drink and going out looking for a victim because they are in a wheelchair, are wearing a kippah, have a different skin colour to you, are gay, a goth, morris dancer whatever.

Sections of society should not be living in fear of unprovoked violence. Hate Crime laws are there to try and deter the proliferation of patterns of violence toward those minority groups. You can not in all seriousness suggest that a gang beating the shit out of someone and saying " take that you fucking nigger, emo, yid, spazzy,morris dancing homo" is not going to make the victim and those in the vicinity think that they are not being singled out for another layer of verbal assault on top of the violence to add to their reticence and fear when next going out in the neighbourhood?