Gay Bar attacked in hate crime

The whole Gay bashers are closet homosexuals thing sounds more like something homosexuals spread around to make themselves feel better about themselves

Dont take that guys insults to heart hes gay to he just hasnt come out

The occastional meh i cant stand gays comment is no diff then any other comment.


If someones constantly is constantly defending his straightness even though it isnt warranted, then who knows.

And as far as reactions to homosexual imagery, Idunno, im betting its just as accurate as a lie detector test, just because you fail doesnt mean you lied...

Men can be aroused by anything, remotely sexual, It doesnt matter what it is realy, and it doesnt mean what they are viewing is whats causing it, It could mean the thing they are viewing only triggers them to think about something else that arouses them..


With that said, this is all only my opinion.

Originally posted by BaastetNoir

Heres what i don't understand ...why is it any crime commicted against gay people or people of different races is considered a "hate crime", but to anyone else that is white people and women in general is "just" a crime...

Now ... are there really crimes than can be called "love-crimes" ??? does any act of crime come out of love ? so why the differenciation...whats makes the crimes against these people more special than others?

BaastetNoir, you've probably had this discussion with before; I agree with you and add that it is a sick way of focusing on the perpetrator's experience instead of the victim's.

In the US, lawyers have made the criminal ideation the focus of contention; this is handy for them, since none of us can read minds.

I wish we'd get back to punishing overt behavior, and quit worrying about what the perp felt.

Many of the most monstrous feel nothing at all . . . ..

.

I agree with you two about the foolishness of hate crime laws. It's not equality, it's right back to the bad ole days of separate but (not really) equal.

The idea behind the legislation was presumably well-intentioned, but the message it sends is all wrong.

I don't believe it is an either/or thing, some attacks on gays are merely carried out by vile hate filled people who merelly need an excuse to vent there disproportionate anger but yes I believe some attacks are compelled by the perps own feelings of being attracted to their own sex. Generally I would say that the more the person has gone out of his way to attack gays specifically and the severity of the attack are good indicators of repressed sexuality.

Either way it's irrelevent any senseless act of violence should be dealt with harshly regardless of the instigators feelings.

But eventually, because of differential punishments, some criminal may choose to have his crime treated this way, to take advantage of the legal features of the law.

For instance, suppose a lender is about to foreclose on the family farm. And the farmer goes to a gay bar and "goes berserk," killing several people, one of whom happens to be his creditor.

He could try to be charged under a hate crime statute, and then use "Temporary insanity due to Gay Rage" as an affirmative defense. He could claim that he was temporarily insane with hate.

Then does a crying, "I was so wrong" guilty plea to impress the jury.

Takes his 8 years knowing that the family gets to keep the farm.


Point is, when you make a special category ("hate crime,") you invite people to use it to avoid prosecution for other, even more serious, offenses.

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Dr that kind of scenario has been played out in UK courts for a number of years before 'hate crime' was even thought of, otherwise known as 'gay panic' with people getting off on reduced sentences. An example one bloke kills a lesbian he's been best friends with for years in a drunken rage after an argument and gets a reduced sentence, another guy was so panic stricken by the idea of gays people he had to hang around gay bars and attack (and eventually murdered) patrons as they were leaving. The whole idea of hate crime was to stop people using ridiculous psychlogical loop holes to get away with murder and focus on the true motivation of the act itself I believe.

I know, ubermunche. The problem is, whenever there are different categories (even when one is originally a worse offence) someone will end up choosing that category as part of a larger legal defense.

I guess the thought behind my post was, it'll just end up being used by lawyers to get their defendants treated as "special".

The real trick in US law is to make a crime look like it was rage, when in fact, the perp is just an excellent actor, and planned to throw a murderous fit when it best served his interests.

Like the US case where a woman ran over a man. Her claim was that she was SO drunk she didn't have any memory of it. Of course, she couldn't explain why, the next morning, when she went out to find her car hood bashed in and covered with blood, that she didn't call the police . . .

Claiming you acted in an impaired mental state (drunk, gay panic, etc.) is a problem for the US legal system. And from what you say, it sound similiar in the UK.

Basically, if you were acting like an idiot, it somehow is supposed to be a partial excuse.


Just like my kids' own affirmative defense: "Yeah, but I didn't mean to."

Well, he's been caught.. and 2 people are dead.

www.cnn.com...

"This is insane," said Heather Volton, 22, of Fall River, Massachusetts, who had known Robida for more than a year. "That kid never so much as raised his voice at me ... This is all pretty much a shock to me, like everyone else."

www.cnn.com

It's always the quiet ones.

I really wish people would stop referring to this as a "hate" crime. There is no such thing!

You want thought police now? Because this is what it's going to come down to.

The point is, he did the crime, it doesn't matter WHY!

Originally posted by Amethyst
I really wish people would stop referring to this as a "hate" crime. There is no such thing!

There is "Such" a thing.

Hate crimes are criminal actions intended to harm or intimidate people because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or other minority group status. They are also referred to as bias crimes.
psychology.ucdavis.edu...

Hate crimes may effectively intimidate other members of the victim's community, leaving them feeling isolated, vulnerable and unprotected by the law.

www.adl.org...

Crimes against persons accounted for 72 percent of hate crime offenses reported. Intimidation was the single most frequently reported hate crime offense, accounting for 41 percent of the total. Damage/destruction/vandalism of property constituted 23 percent; simple assault, 18 percent; and aggravated assault, 13 percent. Twenty persons were murdered in hate-motivated incidents

www.fbi.gov...

[edit on 5-2-2006 by SpittinCobra]

Personally, I think the term "hate crime" was added to the already absurd mountains of statues/code so as to remind people to hate.

In common law (which humans have a priori, and which is a sovereign right in America) there is no need to delineate the motivation of each crime from another. If you hack somebody up, you get hung dead by the weekend. Who needs tort reform? As far as I'm concerned, all the law-merchants can leave their profession and drive truck or do something honest for a living.

We had all our "laws" and "rights" before the constitution. They are written on our hearts. The Bill of Rights is not a list of what rights we possess, because we all possess the rights of common law, as sovereign souls born in America.

Every human soul born in America has the right to their life (and to live it), their liberty (and the defense of it) and their property. The codification of law, and the whole concept of barristers acting as law merchants here in America, was done to provide law for the corporations but to exlude mankind from the full efficacy of that law (unless they're rich). Humans are less important than corporations, in this time. Poor and unpropertied people have no law protecting them. I've seen public defenders fall asleep in criminal court.

You can't murder someone these days not because it's wrong (common law has already established that), but because the murder eliminates capital (a taxpayer) which the world bank owns. This is the reason why cops are so interested in seatbelts also. Taxpayers need to be kept alive to keep working and paying the debt.

What's truly funny, is that when America finally gets revealed for what has been going on (As Bush-I said, "They'd chase us down the streets if they knew what we've really done.") then, on that day, Americans of all types, gay, straight, poor and rich, will find themselves suddenly, brutally equalized with each other.

In survival scenarios of the past, homosexuals and homophobes both were considered worthless by the state and were cast into a prison camp. What happens then? A crowd of people deprived of their rights together all become sort of similar, don't they? Nobody asks each other if they exclusively enjoy male or female genitalia, they ask "Do you know where I can get some food? I'm starving."


[edit on 5-2-2006 by smallpeeps]

Joseph D. Robida has died of wounds he received in a shootout with police in Baxter County, AR.

I've got to say that I find the reactions to these sorts of stories sort of unsettling.

It's odd that in this thread, this generation of Americans are characterized as the "most tolerant ever." Honestly, I don't think that Americans are any more tolerant than they've ever been, and overall it seems that they're actually less tolerant. The thing that's changed isn't the amount of tolerance we show, but the targets of our intolerance.

Why else was this story posted, and why else has it gained so many responses, than the desire to express our intolerance? Granted that the target for that intolerance (an arguably irrational man who committed a violent crime) might be said to deserve at least some measure of opprobrium, the story exists not to teach any lessons or even really to impart any useful information, but simply to grant us a convenient target for our hatred. We thump our chests and scream, "This is a hateful man! We will not tolerate hatred! Stone him!"

That's still hatred. Yes, overall Americans don't hate gays or blacks or Jews or what-have-you like they once did. Instead we've just substituted an even more bitter and unrelenting hatred for "homophobes" and "racists" and "nazis," or for anyone who even vaguely appears to be a homophobe or racist or nazi.

I'm sure there have been at least a few dozen people attacked and critically injured in bars all over the country in the last few weeks, but none of those stories rate a mention here. Why not? Because the violence isn't the point-- the attacks aren't the point-- the harm done isn't the point. The point is to provide an example of a group of people that it has been deemed acceptable-- even admirable-- toward which to level one's hatred, then to do so.

I'm just not sure that that's that much of an improvement. The hatred is still there-- the intolerance is still there-- the search for someone on whom to blame all the world's troubles is still there-- only the target has changed.

Viscerally, I understand the hatred levelled against such people, but philosophically it bothers me. It just seems that it can't be sufficient to only hate those that are deemed worthy of hatred. We can't really call ourselves "tolerant" until we don't hate at all.

And I just want to post my agreement with the posters who have already pointed out that the entire notion of "hate crimes" is flawed and potentially dangerous.

Crimes are crimes. A person who kills another person is a murderer. The victim is no more nor less dead, and the perpetrator is no more nor less guilty, because of their respective race, creed, color, gender or sexual orientation.

As has been pointed out already, it actually appears that "hate crime" legislation exists in order to continue to remind us to hate. It doesn't aid the cause of equal treatment under the law, and in fact is directly opposed to it. It provides another separation-- another way in which we the people are treated unequally based solely on differences that should be insignificant. It places emphasis on the differences between us, nominally (and obviously irrationally) to remind us NOT to place emphasis on our differences.

The notion of "hate crimes" is axiomatically divisive. It places a variable value on human life based solely on the very differences on which we claim to be trying to teach people not to focus.

I went to BTS and ranted about "hate crimes." I was getting pretty miffed.

So if you want to talk about it there, head on over to the "Rant" section.