Howie Klein at firedoglake calls out Chris Carney (PA-10) for opposing the Hate Crimes Bill. Atrios makes him the wanker of the day. I understand. I really do. And I feel Klein’s pain that he feels he was misled. But, I actually agree with Carney on this and do not think his vote is a betrayal of gay rights.
The bill had a lot of laudable things in it…especially funds to help local police combat hate crimes. But, at the end of the day, it was a bill to set sentencing standards based on the perceived motivations of people that commit violent crime. I have never supported doing that. And I don’t question Carney’s sincerity in opposing the legislation for the reasons that he has stated.
Here is what I think.
During sentencing, a judge and a jury should be able to consider mitigating and aggravating factors. Beating someone up just because they are gay should be a valid aggravating factor in sentencing. But it shouldn’t be a separate charge. That introduces too much ambiguity into the judicial process.
If you are facing a range of 5-10 years for assault and battery, the fact that your crime was motivated by homophobia, racism, or misogyny should be considered and used against you. But that is all. If someone beats me up because they hate white men, and I can demonstrate that that was their primary motivation in assaulting me, then that should be an aggravating factor in sentencing. But no one should be more protected than me just because they are more likely to be a victim of a hate crime. A hate crime is a hate crime.
You are completely ignoring the basis for Howie Klein’s complaint. Chris Carney LIED to him, and he LIED to the voters in a Project Vote Smart questionnaire. Here’s how Howie tells it:
BooMan, your arguments are irrelevant. What is relevant is what Carney himself promised, not some later argument as to why those promises were misbegotten.
If Carney lied then I have zero problem holding him accountable for those lies.
The issue was less this particular bill/vote than two things, 1. that Carney stated both in previous interviews that Howie had with him and the questionnaire that he would support laws adding the GBLT community to hate crimes; 2. The reason he gave Howie for opposing it was vague and smacked of repug. talking points. Had Carney been direct about provisions in the bill that he found worth opposing, the reaction may well have been different.
This is about betrayal of trust. Howie and the FDL/Blue America community were betrayed and once burned . . . .
Since you agree with this point, perhaps you might want to update the front page post and let us all know that. Up to you, but it would be helpful to the discussion if you did.
So, no separate pre-trial distinctions for motivation or for the class of person victimized? Would you eliminate the current special provisions for crimes committed against police/fire/rescue workers while in the line of duty? Then there are the automatic increased penalties for assault, attempted murder or murder of various federal officers and the President. Do all these people fall into the “we’re all the same, bleed the same, feel the same pain” class you describe?
Hate crimes have the effect of putting an entire community in fear. That is one of the motivations for hate crimes. Hate crime laws exist for a reason.
Hate crime is no more thought crime than is premeditated murder.
“No one should be more protected than me just because…” Whiteman speaks from a perspective of privilege. Try to imagine that you are always vulnerable, and sometimes surrounded by hate instead of love.
If somebody rapes and murdurs me just because he hates white men or hates women, I want the judge and jury to know that and take preventative action that will protect everybody else from the hate.
Not talking about punishment, emotion is just as valid as logic here. Judges and juries use both together without ambiguity. We needed the civil rights acts to change the perception of black people as subhuman. Now we need to stand up and say that women and gays and Mexicans are people like us deserving of respect and equal protection under the law.
It needs to be said out loud.
But no one should be more protected than me just because they are more likely to be a victim of a hate crime. A hate crime is a hate crime.
This doesn’t quite make sense to me. If someone is more likely to a victim of a hate crime, then why shouldn’t they be more protected?
If hate crimes are stimulated by hate speech, written words, movies, etc., could the expressions of hate be considered similar to yelling “Fire!” in a theater?
You don’t live in some utopian vaccuum, ya know.
But no one should be more protected than me just because they are more likely to be a victim of a hate crime.
You should not be more protected than me from being the victim of a hate crime just because you are a white man (I don’t know your sexual orientation, but the from this post, I assume you are straight…).
But you are. The very fact that you are a white man makes you ALREADY more protected than I am.
How can you leave that basic fact out of this conversation?
Women and minorities don’t want MORE protection than you, just the basic right to not live in fear of being harmed because of our sex, race, sexual orientation. Like you have.
I think you are missing the point of hate crimes enhancements. The difference between a hate crime and a garden variety mugging is that the hate crime aims to intimidate and keep a class of persons in their place. (Folks who do this aren’t particularly good at identifying their targets, so a perp can be guilty of a hate crime when the person they kicked shit out of was actually not a member of a hated group.) The enhancement is for the harm to the community, in addition to the ordinary sentence which is for the harm to the individual hurt by the perp.
Because we have people who use violence to attempt to keep down classes of our citizens, we need community standards that enforce the notion that such behavior is wrong — on top of the ordinary statute that makes assaulting, murdering, etc. an individual a crime. That’s what hate crimes statutes are for. The individual perp gets made a spectacle of on behalf of the community. I think that is fine.
Carney seems to be your ordinary political weasel.
Actually, I agree with you that that is the primary purpose of the law, which is exactly why people are correct when they say the law creates protections for some communities and not others.
I don’t know why this new law is going to add a lot to the ‘spectacle’. I think it will mainly lead to prosecutors grandstanding and piling on charges of hate to ordinary crimes.
For every bigot that gets an extra 10 years in jail there will be someone being charged for a hate crime for punching someone, when they punched them for being an a-hole, and not because of their race or sexual preference.
I think it’s a bad law. There’s a lot of stuff in the law that I think is really good. Like this:
But I would have voted against it. I think the courts are dealing with hate crime in a sensible way right now. I’d support strong sentencing guidelines.
Another point of hate crimes legislation is to give the feds grounds for intervening in cases where local law enforcement (for whatever reason) are dragging their feet.