3 thoughts on “My Life Is Less Valuable to Congress”

1. Some people will say that motive is used all of the time when determining sentencing – a second degree murder conviction will be looked upon differently when the murderer was part of a drug deal gone wrong rather than he walked in on some guy and his wife. And of course if a black guy killed you because he hates whitey, he could also get the enhancement. (I just read a case where a hate crime enhancement was upheld against a group of black men who beat up a white kid.)

   However, you’re right, it smacks of inequality, and that’s usually a sign of actual inequality. A murder is a murder, I’m not sure why a judge (or a jury where they are sentencing) needs to delve too deep into the psyche of a convict to sentence. Though I feel that all murderers should be given roughly the same sentence anyway.

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2. Wow! I never thought a post of mine would elicit such a response.

   The US already has a federal hate crimes law, but now congressional Democrats have passed an amendment to the law so that hate crimes against gays will be covered. And the prospect of protecting gays against hate crimes has thrown the right wing into a tizzy:

   ECache trots out a familiar argument: hate crimes legislation diminishes the groups who aren’t protected. The logic goes like this: if Bob spraypaints a swastika on my door and Pete spraypaints a swastika on the door of my Jewish neighbor, Bob and Pete should get the same punishment. If a law takes into account the fact that Pete’s crime is also an offense against every Jew in the neighborhood, then I am somehow diminished.

   While appletree acknowledges the argument I made, it does nothing to dispel it. There are lots of loaded words in the piece (Christian terrorists, anti-Muslim bloggers, Fascist, Axis of Crazy, sort of thing you’d expect to read in the Nazi publications, Christofascism, right-wing Roman Catholics, Professional bigot, Bush is threatening a veto in a bid to appease his bigoted base of support, hatred, anti-immigrant). It seems like calling names and labeling is the way his argument runs.

   This is not discourse; this is merely a smear campaign. It’s too bad that a response could not be reasoned as this could be a good debate.

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3. “If a law takes into account the fact that Pete’s crime is also an offense against every Jew in the neighborhood, then I am somehow diminished.”

   Uh… What? Does every Jew in the neighborhood have to come help clean up the door?

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