The Blue Board

There should not be a violence against women act or a hate crime law or any similar law. It is patently un-American and against the very fabric of our founding. If you commit crime X (rape, murder, assault...), you should get the same punishment whether you assaulted a man or a woman. Similar for hate crimes, whether you stabbed the guy for the name on his jersey or the color of his skin, the punishment should be the same.

If you push for said legislation in one breath and then scream for equality in the next breath, then I pray your brain gets a little more oxygen with the third breath b/c it is obviously running low.

^^^ Another reason why we are screwed up as a country ^^^

No, I am not suggesting that burning a cross in a black family's yard is the same as a non-permitted bonfire. However there are a whole host of existing laws that could cover this just fine. This burning of a cross is basically a threat that involved smaller crimes in the commission of it. Just off the top of my non-lawyer head:

- Threat/Stalking - this is the basically the crux of what it should be treated as. It shouldn't matter if it was a shady business developer threatening you b/c you don't want to sell your home to them, a mob guy threatening you not to talk to the police or a dumb-ass racist threatening you b/c he doesn't like the color of your skin. Again, the punishment should be the same. There are a host of laws against making credible threats against someone's life.
- Trespassing - small, but tacking on all the little things like this can get a the sentence up there.
- Reckless endangerment - starting a fire near someone's home while they sleep should qualify (see the previous one)

The reason I say this is a reason that we are screwed up is b/c we refuse to use common sense and have created a nightmare spaghetti mess of laws (and tax code) in this country. We don't need a specific law to cover every potential scenario (infinite), but rather use existing laws (modify them if necessary).

As I do understand your intentions, I believe you're wrong. I think crimes SHOULD be mitigated pending circumstances. You can't tell me that rape is rape and murder is murder. Man 1 murders a man same age. Man 2 murders a man of different color, sexuality, tortures him for 3 days and then murders him. They're not the same.

You SHOULD have laws enacted based on sexuality, gender or race. If I kill you because I'm pissed at you becaues you did something is one thing, but if I kill you because you're a different race, creed or culture is a horse of a different color. I would have a premeditated agenda that's not only against the person killed, but persons of ALL those races, creeds and/or cultures.

It's trying to get us to act more civil as a race and I think it's absolutely warranted.

Is murder right? No, but if it is done due to an action that somebody else did, that's a different story.

Premeditated murder is premeditated murder. Why should the punishment be different if the person did it because of race or simply because he hated the other person's car, or girlfriend, or whatever?

You are confusing the issue. You add race, sexual orientation, and torture, to the second scenario. Torture is a different thing. That is another level of brutality that warrants greater punishment.

If you have a killer that kills a man of another race or sexual orientation, then maybe he is proving he doesn't discriminate based on those factors. He is an equal oportunity killer.

In any case, are you advocating if the victim is of a different ethnicity or sexual orientation than the killer, it is proof positive that the killing was motivated strictly by those factors?

Good now I can beat my woman