Obama’s remarks at the signing yesterday:
In the most recent year for which we have data, the FBI reported roughly 7,600 hate crimes in this country. Over the past 10 years, there were more than 12,000 reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation alone. And we will never know how many incidents were never reported at all.
And that’s why, through this law, we will strengthen the protections against crimes based on the color of your skin, the faith in your heart, or the place of your birth. We will finally add federal protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (Applause.) And prosecutors will have new tools to work with states in order to prosecute to the fullest those who would perpetrate such crimes. Because no one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love. No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are or because they live with a disability.
At root, this isn’t just about our laws; this is about who we are as a people. This is about whether we value one another — whether we embrace our differences, rather than allowing them to become a source of animus. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the mind-set of someone who would kidnap a young man and beat him to within an inch of his life, tie him to a fence, and leave him for dead. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the twisted mentality of those who’d offer a neighbor a ride home, attack him, chain him to the back of a truck, and drag him for miles until he finally died.
But we sense where such cruelty begins: the moment we fail to see in another our common humanity — the very moment when we fail to recognize in a person the same fears and hopes, the same passions and imperfections, the same dreams that we all share.
Just words, right Sully? And he won’t even say Gay!
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Ready for the gnashing of teeth, rending of clothing and wailing? Nice way to start the day!
Obama would be taken seriously if he had delivered this speech while wearing assless chaps, anything less is ‘just words’.
Cerberus
On behalf of the queer community, we’d divorce him, but since marriages aren’t allowed in this state, we can’t dissolve our out-of-state marriage here.
But he’s definitely sleeping on the couch tonight.
Cerberus
@Cerberus:
The him is Sully if it wasn’t clear.
We’re upstairs partying with Obama and playing Rock Band.
RememberNovember
omg that’s so gay/ghey/guay/gue….
Kryptik
But…but…but….All Violent Crimes are Hate Crimes!!! DON’T YOU KNOW?!
…ahem. But seriously, is it just me, or is that the most vapid argument against hate crime legislation ever concocted? Aside perhaps from the ‘legislating thought crime’ one.
Zifnab
So here’s my beef with Hate Crimes legislation in general. If two guys drive up in a pickup truck covered in Confederate Flags and beat me up for holding hands with a black girl or another dude, why is that different from them showing up and beating me for no reason at all?
I just don’t understand why unprovoked violent crime needs to be chopped up and categorized.
There are certain laws and regulations – business anti-discrimination laws, for instance – that make sense. But when you’ve got people like Mathew Shepherd – who were beaten to death, what does this type of legislation do to prevent or punish these crimes in the future? Last I checked, 1st degree murder is 1st degree murder.
Lisa
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
LMFAO.
Goddamnit, they should have a blog award for the blog with the most awesome commenters. I never fail to get a good guffaw at least 3 or 4 times a day from the comments on this blog.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I noticed that the few diaries about the signing that made the wreck list at the GoS have quickly faded away with little response.
That’s gratitude!
Kryptik
@Zifnab:
Several reasons.
1) Hate crime often times doesn’t end up just affecting the individual victim. It’s a form of low-level terrorism, intimidation focused on a specific community with the implicit threat: ‘this could be you, not because of what you’ve done or what you’ve said or even who you are, but what you are.’
2) Federal Hate Crimes legislation allows for the involvement of federal officials, to ensure that the case is handled, as there are cases where local officials and the like might waffle on the case compared to a similar one, because they were sympathetic to why the accused did what they did.
slag
I wanted to highlight a quote from those remarks just to marvel at it. But it was all just too moving. More of that, please!
asiangrrlMN
@Zifnab: It’s more to signify that hatred against a certain community and the systematic terrorizing of said community will not be tolerated. I am not completely sold on hate crime laws, but I can understand the reasoning behind them.
I really like what President Obama said here. I am completely ignoring the whole Sully hissy fit because I find him (Sully) not worth my time.
And, just because I can, here is a link to President Obama’s observation of Diwali in the White House last week as well as his commemoration of Asian Pacific Islanders (API) something or the other. Pretty cool.
Lisa
Zinfab, I don’t know. I suppose it is trying to counter the “gay panic” or “he was eyeballing my white woman” defense that has exonerated so many murderers and violent thugs in the past? I am certainly no legal expert so you are probably right.
John Cole
@Zifnab: Because at the very least, if the local authorities fail to act, the feds can step in. These laws are not pointless, and they are not prosecuting people for “what they think.” You are, in fact, allowed to think hateful things about black people and gays and lesbians all day long. You just aren’t allowed to beat them to death or burn crosses in their yards. And if the local cops are bigots who refuse to prosecute folks doing stuff like this, the feds will.
I call that an objectively good thing.
asiangrrlMN
@Kryptik: Thanks. You summed it up better than I did. Now I know what to
plagiarizesay the next time I am confronted with this question.John Cole
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): You know, I made a similar comment a while back, and have come to the conclusion it just made me look like a jackass. I was wrong to say it, and it is offensive. Being gay isn’t just about “assless chaps,” and saying things like that makes you look bad.
The Bearded Blogger
Sully won’t rest until the “Get Andrew Sullivan a Pony, Gay gay gay gay gay” act passes.
@RememberNovember: guay means “cool” in Mexico
@Zifnab: It federalizes the crime, which is helpful if the state in which you are holding hands with a black girl is Alabama.
John Sears
@John Cole: It probably wouldn’t buy Sully off either. What Obama clearly needed to do was send a couch with litter-bearers to Sully’s house, bring him to the press conference along a path strewn with fresh rose petals and cheering crowds, and then deliver the entire speech via sign language so that he could repeat the word ‘gay’ 1500 times aloud.
Anything else is just words.
JoePo
Every semester here in Wyoming, I get at least one student who writes a paper on hate crime legislation and why it’s bad, and they use the Shepard case as their biggest piece of evidence.
There’s almost always a line about a) it really was just a drug deal gone bad or b) We can’t read their minds!!! How do we know what they were thinking?!?!
And then every time I have to note, in screaming red letters, Because that was their god damn defense! They thought it would grant them lenience to say they killed him because he was gay and put a move on them.
Anyway, the really depressing thing in these papers is the assumption that gay men are grabby creeps who need to be beaten in order to show you’re not interested.
But that’s Wyoming. We named our fucking International Studies Center after Cheney.
slag
@John Cole:
This has always been the best argument in favor of hate crime legislation. It’s something you don’t think about when you’re living in a major metropolitan area.
Cerberus
@John Cole:
This also.
@Zifnab:
Hate crimes are an act of terrorism against a group. When your group is murdered a lot, say at least once a month, everyone who belongs to the group gets twitchy. They stay at home more often, they get anxious on the street, their freedom is in many ways curtailed to be themselves without fear and that usually increases general persecution as well.
Hate crimes allow a crime to be treated as the act of terrorism it is rather than an isolated crime.
4tehlulz
Aravosis is at it again.
White House refuses to release list of gay invitees at Hate Crimes reception
I’m speechless. Seriously WTF
Cerberus
@Zifnab:
Ah yes, here’s a good example, you know how New Yorkers were feeling like and acting like after september 11th? Imagine that was every day of your life and sometimes the cops investigating agreed with the terrorists and think you deserved it.
jenniebee
@The Bearded Blogger:
fixed
The Moar You Know
@Zifnab:
@John Cole:
This is the real issue, Zifnab. It wasn’t until the Feds started stepping in that the South stopped lynching uppity nigras who failed to observe such social norms as not staring at a white woman or failing to shine a white man’s shoes on demand. Local juries just flat-out wouldn’t convict these
KKK membersconcerned citizens, on the rare occasions that a prosecutor had the testicular fortitude to haul them up on charges (a situation that occasionally led to the death of said prosecutor).There are still many communities in this nation that a black person isn’t safe in, and I won’t even get started on how safe it is to be a gay man or woman in most of this country.
John Sears
@4tehlulz: What the HELL?
Seriously?
This is getting into Malkin territory here. What’s next, stalking all the gay invitees home and putting them under surveillance to make sure they’re REALLY gay?
Uggh. If everyone who ever attends an event like this has to put their lives under a microscope then a lot of people would refuse to go.
kay
@Zifnab:
Because random is different than targeted. Because random is the risk everyone takes, and targeted increases the risk for all the members of the targeted group, and might indicate a different law enforcement approach is warranted.
Assault has always been unlawful. Assault against family members is unlawful. Yet, we wrote a whole set of rules for domestic violence because we recognized that it was different, and required a different approach.
Wrongful detention and arrest is a bad thing. But we specifically identify wrongful detention and arrest based on a police officer acting based on racial profiling, because that’s not a random bad thing, a risk we all share, but instead increases the risk of unlawful detention and arrest of the targeted group.
ericvsthem
It almost goes without saying, but that is a fine speech by Obama’s TelePromptr.
Kryptik
@4tehlulz:
….wh…huh?
I….really don’t get this complaint at all. And I used to react Americablog on a daily basis.
The Moar You Know
@4tehlulz: Being publicly identified as gay and in attendance at a ceremony singing hate-crimes legislation against gays into law
canWILL enhance your personal safety*.*statement totally not true
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@John Cole:
The whole ‘issue’ behind this brouhaha between Obama and far too many in the GLBT community is just as stupid as what I said above. If they want to be stupid about this then let everyone do the same. I know assless chaps != GHEY! (duh!) but that isn’t even where I was coming from.
I’m just joining in on the stupidity since the silence is so deafening right now
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Oh, and me worrying about how I look here?
bwahahahahaha!
You sure know how to cheer a guy up John. ;)
4tehlulz
@Kryptik: I did too, until he got on the NEGROES DID PROP 8 crazy train after the election. I just went over there to see if he would even acknowledge this moment, and found this.
Anyway, you would think it might occur to him that given the reasons that this legislation is being enacted, such a list (which shouldn’t be kept anyway) might be a bad idea. Either he’s completely stupid or doesn’t care, and I’m not sure which is worse.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I was thinking abou this, and I wish someone would roll up a copy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and stick it up Sully’s nose.
“All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”
It doesn’t specifically list all of the different races and colors and nationalities and religions that are covered by the bill.
JUST WORDS!
@4tehlulz: Yeah and if the WH did release those names and several of the attendees received “presents” in the form of rocks flung through their windows, guess who would be complicit in the horrible acts of gay bashing?
People really are entirely too stupid to be worth the kicking they so badly need.
jibeaux
Anything short of Obama delivering this speech punctuated by snippets of “Mamma Mia” is a slap in the face. Not a good slap in the face by someone in buttless pants, either, but a bad slap in the face.
Tman
Look, as a gay man, I have my beefs with Team Obama when it comes to its handling of some gay issues. That justice department move comparing gays to pedophiles and bestials was truly apalling, and it’s a mystery to me why there isn’t faster movement on DADT. I wish they’d get a backbone when it comes to supporting the gay referendums in Maine and Washington.
I’m also not a big fan of hate crimes laws, but if we’re going to have them on the books, it makes no sense not to include a class of people that many people still believe is perfectly fine to villify and attack, fer chrissake. In that context, this was a good move and a good speech, whether Obama used the word “gay” at the signing, or not. I mean, c’mon, he also didn’t specifically call out jews, muslims, blacks, hispanics or any other group covered in the bill. The Sullivan’s and Arivosis’s, while I get where they’re coming from, need to recognize progress when they see it.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@John Sears: Dear God, don’t give the fRiechtards ideas. They’re still in a snit over so-do-my* laws being overturned. Bedroom cameras monitored by the local vice squad would be their idea of RealAmerican(R) law enforcement.
*Friends, neighbors … don’t tell me I’m the only one who has seen that t-shirt.
ChrisZ
We need to figure out how to kill the Hate Crimes = Thought Crimes meme.
Morbo
@Kryptik: But South Park said so! Sullivan takes his “South Park conservative” schtick way too fucking far. He’s young and hip, not like all those other stodgy conservatives, as proof here’s a South Park clip. I’ll take him over the theocrats, and I like South Park too, but if you think it’s a great idea to crib your ideology from a cartoon then you probably have a pretty overly-simplistic worldview.
PhoenixRising
John, thanks for running this, as I haven’t had time to watch, listen or read the actual President’s actual remarks. (Sniff. Wow. My President thinks that if I get killed by political violence in the course of living my life, the crime should be investigated. This is a new feeling, kind of rights-having-y.)
Yeah, I think if I put on my Paranoid Gay Know It All Hat it will tell me that This Is Vital Information because it will allow me to keep a list of who among attendees is closeted and up for investigation by Mike Rogers.
Then I’ll put that hat back in its sparkly pink box and use it as a footrest while I call Maine voters to make sure they don’t forget to vote NO on taking away substantive equality.
After we win on Tuesday, I’ll set fire to the box and put the ashes in the river.
The Grand Panjandrum
I wish Andrew would just go back to looking for Trig’s birth certificate or harping on the Bell Curve. That wasn’t nearly as offensive as this bullshit.
kay
@Zifnab:
I struggled with hate crimes legislation, because there are reasons for concern. At the end of the day, though, I think they have been portrayed, by conservatives, as a radical departure from widely accepted approaches to law enforcement and prosecution, and I don’t think that’s true.
It did take me a while, though. They have a neat and tidy theoretical argument on hate crimes, opponents, and it’s attractive because it’s so clean and easy, but I don’t think it holds up, real world.
bago
Has anyone ever seen assed-chaps, or half-assed chaps?
Kryptik
@ChrisZ:
I’m honestly at a loss as to how, considering smacking them in the face with the fact that we already prosecute based on motive does little but cause them to plug their ears.
slag
OK. I have to marvel at one part at least:
Honestly, the juxtaposition here is just perfect. The imagery is just brutal, but the sentiment is quite inspiring. It harkens back to “We shall overcome” without employing overt sentimentality. The subject of equality is where Obama always hits his stride. I wish he’d go there more when it comes to civil liberties and even economic protections as well. I sometimes see distinct forays in that direction, but I always want more.
Kryptik
@bago:
I actually dared to find an image, and made the mistake of googling up ‘chaps’ on a public computer.
Naive, thy name is Kryptik.
Comrade Dread
All crime does that to the community. Hell, it’s the reason we lock our doors at night.
It’s the reason why criminal acts are prosecuted by the State as opposed to affected individuals, because crime (in some ways) affects society in general.
So I find that unconvincing.
The jurisdiction reply is a more convincing argument for the law. Though I wish we could find a way to do this without further separating society into groups, emphasizing divisions and reinforcing a victim mentality.
gwangung
Sorry. No, it doesn’t.
When the crime occurs and it looks like it points directly at you and you alone, it’s not “all crime” and it’s not the “entire community.” It gets personal in no other way.
Bob L
I am strait as an arrow and all this talk of Obama in assless chaps is even getting me turned on. Face it, it is clear hot and sweaty Obama man love is at work here.
The Grand Panjandrum
@JoePo:
If they are against this legislation then they should be OK with women carrying a concealed handgun to fend off drunken (or sober) dick heads groping them. You know, they are just trying to defend themselves from being assaulted by an obvious jackass. Besides, any guy willing to grope a womn, without consent, is guilty of something far worse and should be subject to summary execution. Seems fair to me.
CalD
Where is the outrage?!?!? :-b
Steeplejack
@Zifnab:
I think the subtext is that federal hate-crime legislation adds some tools to the toolbox which can be brought to bear if, say, local law enforcement is less than enthusiastic about pursuing certain crimes, e.g., the murder of a trannie prostitute, because he/she “had it coming” because of lifestyle, etc.
Looking back, recall how the feds had to get involved before the murders of civil rights workers in the South in the ’60s were properly investigated.
Kryptik
@Comrade Dread:
The smaller the pool of possible victims for such crimes, the much more fearful that pool has to be, as the more likely they are that they’re going to be singled out. Yes, any sort of horrible crime can shake a community. An assault, a mugging, a murder, all those are all bad enough. Leaving enough reasonable inference that it happened because they were ‘the wrong sort’, and you as the same sort of ‘wrong sort’, could very well be next? That’s a whole extra layer of fear and horror to compound on the already fearful worry one would have over crime in their neighborhood.
Remember too that none of this stuff happens in a vacuum.
John Sears
@Comrade Dread: It isn’t just about jurisdiction or about making a judgment that one crime is more heinous than another; it’s about making a judgment that one type of CRIMINAL is more dangerous as well.
For example, take murder. Most murders are crimes of impulse, acts taken under severe emotional strain. The recidivism rate on murder is actually not that high; most people who’ve committed a murder wouldn’t do it again, if left to their own devices.
On the other hand, there are people who, say, murder for money. They are *extremely* likely to commit more murders for cash. Likewise, a person who beats someone to death for being gay is overwhelmingly more likely to commit another murder at a later date than a guy who beat his wife’s boyfriend to death with a tire iron after catching them in bed together.
Thus, a conventional terrorist and a hate criminal are alike, in a way that ‘all criminals’ are not. Certain crimes/criminals demonstrate a more dangerous mental pathology than others, and thusly present a greater risk to society in the future.
Steeplejack
@John Cole:
You are correct. Chaps are by definition assless.
Interesting niblet. In places where chaps are actually worn for work–outside of nightclubs, I mean–the usual pronunciation is “shaps.” Or it used to be, anyway.
kay
@Comrade Dread:
Okay. I got a million of ’em :)
Try this. Should we identify hate crimes as hate crimes? Is there any value to the targeted community (or broader society) in doing that?
How do we manage or measure if we insist on claiming they’re random, when they’re not?
Would there be any difference in law enforcement approach to investigation (or prevention) if there was a possibility that a violent act was based on status of the victim?
ChicagoDude
For people like Zifnab, that say things like “I just don’t understand why unprovoked violent crime needs to be chopped up and categorized.” – you really can’t take their arguments/protestations seriously unless they show me that they were against hate crimes bills for *religion* at the time that law was being debated. Why do they love saying “all crime is a hate crime” now but not back when dealing with religion (which, unlike homosexuality, in the end, is a choice)? What’s different now except that gay people, to him, are not worthy of protection?
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Kryptik: I’m seriously late to the party so someone may already have mentioned this– it’s really just adding further punishment based on the intent of the perpetrator. Like the difference between, say, murder and aggravated murder. Battery and aggravated battery.
Because the intent of the crime is to intimidate a community, there should be harsher penalties just as the intent to commit cold blooded murder should instigate harsher penalties than a “heat of passion” murder.
(Which is NOT to say that the “heat of passion” killer shouldn’t be prosecuted and punished, lest someone misundertake me…)
Warren Terra
@4thelulz
Aravosis wants the administration to start releasing lists of their invitees segregated by sexuality? Can you imagine if they really did say “today we invited 16 straight and 6 gay folks”?
lutton
stupid…by Sully’s logic, O should be mentioning every race, every disability, every nationality, every creed or faith.
And sexual orientation is certainly wider than gay or straight. You could be into S&M or have a foot fetish or some other (legal) thing that tickles your fancy.
tim
John, your much-justified though long delayed ragging on Sullivan (I believe yesterday you referred to him as an “idiot,” and in doing so you sent a shudder up my thigh and beyond) has given me hope for a brighter tomorrow and my first, documented Blogasm.
thank you.
now to towel off my keyboard
Comrade Dread
Sorry, but yes, it does, because we all start to think, that could be us.
You don’t think random deaths of kids or innocents from drive-bys or gang fights affects a community?
You don’t think a woman who reads about the rape of another woman in her neighborhood is affected?
Abductions, disappearances, home invasions, murders, any time this happens in your neighborhood, it affects you and makes you wonder if it can happen to you.
Betsy
I have a question about an issue I haven’t seen discussed at all about this bill. Obama states that
.
I’m actually completely perplexed about how this will be implemented. Genderidentity I understand. But does this mean all rapes will fall under this rubric? Domestic violence? Certainly those are crimes of terror against a gender, rape in particular. You rarely see a man saying explicitly that he’s committing violence because she’s a woman, but you do, all the time, see violence combined with language like “you fucking cunt/bitch/whore” etc. Anyone who doubts that rape is a terrorist act against women should merely look at the reactions to rapes in the news: “she shouldn’t have worn that/drunk anything/led him on/gone outside at night.” It reinforces the sense that if you behave “inappropriately” as woman, you bring sexual violence upon yourself.
Ugh, I don’t know where I’m going with this, except to ask how you all think this will be applied in practice, if at all. It’s hard for me to imagine what could constitute a hate crime against gender if rape isn’t one, but i somehow doubt they’re going to start prosecuting all rapes as hate crimes.
Comrade Dread
To which I would say, that this is a case of resource allocation when hunting for the criminal and for a judge to consider during punishment phases.
Not necessarily giving prosecutors more charges they can throw against a wall to see if they stick.
RedKitten
Fix’d
And I agree with the others about the need for hate crimes legislation. There are too many people who are willing to look the other way or brush stuff under the rug when the victim is “different” in some way. This prevents that from happening, so that our society has a lesser risk of having any real-life Tom Robinsons — or at the very least, that the families of the Tom Robinsons of our society have a greater chance of getting justice.
danimal
Hate crimes are, in fact, terrorism. The difference between a plain vanilla crime and a hate crime is that hate crimes are committed as a statement to a group of victims.
Beating a man because after he insulted you is wrong and should be punished. Beating a man because he is a Buddhist, or is gay, or has dark skin is a message: people like you are going to suffer simply for your faith, your orientation or your color.
The message is intended for a group of people and is usually unmistakable (i.e. your ‘types’ aren’t welcome here, don’t live your perverted lifestyle in my town, don’t get uppity, etc.). The violence of hate crimes is a form of communication, a political message, and that’s why hate crimes deserve a distinct place in law.
Ash
That’s not true one bit. If someone in your town gets murdered, you’re sorta scared and you just hope they catch the guy. If a group of skinheads is roaming around assaulting/murdering black people, black people are in turn going to be a hell of a lot more fearful than your run of the mill white people.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Warren Terra: Yes, I can hear the mixed nuts calling Obama a raging homophobe OR a flaming queen now.
John Sears
@Comrade Dread: Err, hmm.
By making it a federal crime, it allows us to allocate federal law enforcement resources, and take over cases if local law enforcement decides not to deal with the problem.
So this bill does precisely what you think it should do.
If these hate crimes weren’t defined in federal legislation, we couldn’t assign FBI agents to the case, use federal funds to aid prosecutions and so forth.
It isn’t just about adding charges to see what sticks. If there’s no federal crime, there’s no federal involvement.
Max
@4tehlulz: Americablog posts nothing but chum (in my opinion). I used to go there to learn about a community for which I am not a part, and to see things from a different perspective. At this point, it is not a perspective I care to understand.
tripletee
@Steeplejack:
Still, we need some way to differentiate between chaps worn in pride parades and gay bars from chaps worn in 4th of July parades and rodeos (allowing that, in some cases, they could be the same chaps worn by the same person). “Pantless chaps?” I dunno.
Cruel Jest
OMG! Obama totally just said gays were disabled. Who does he think he is?
Comrade Dread
It will probably depend on whether or not there is enough evidence to make the charge stick.
Though, personally, I wouldn’t mind revisiting rape sentencing guidelines to make sure the douchebags that perpetuate this crime get life sentences.
(I would say bullet to the back of the head, but again, I don’t trust the government to get and convict the right person.)
Nellcote
Can you imagine Aravosis demanding that Bush segregate out the gay participants at any WH event?
DanF
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Priceless. I will be stealing that for use in conversation.
Comrade Dread
Wouldn’t the equal protection clause cover this already?
Bad Horse's Filly
@Kryptik: Well said.
John Sears
@Comrade Dread: The equal protection clause was thrown out by the Supreme Court after the Civil War to thwart Reconstruction. As a matter of law, it more or less no longer exists. (see here for some detail)
That’s why the feds used the Interstate Commerce clause to deal with segregation in hotels and housing and so forth. It was a bit of legal trickery to deal with the gaping hole left by more or less nullifying the EP clause in the 19th century.
Likewise, you’ll often see the Due Process clause doing sub work meant for Equal Protection.
So, no. It wouldn’t. Plus, it’s all well and good to say that the Constitution guarantees a right, but until you put a mechanism in place to actually enforce that guarantee it’s largely meaningless. This law is such a mechanism.
Comrade Dread
So wouldn’t a law that simply stated that the Justice Department possessed the authority to step in and prosecute a criminal offense if it was determined that the State or local prosecutors were denying an individual equal protection under the law accomplish this?
Granted, there might be a Supreme Court challenge, but (and perhaps I am being naive), I can’t imagine that five modern Supreme Court justices would really side with segregationists and continue to view a fairly obvious clause in the constitution as not meaning what it clearly means.
BethanyAnne
@Comrade Dread:
Tehehe. You made a funny.
FlipYrWhig
@Tman:
I don’t remember that bestiality was discussed; the usual way it’s remembered is that the brief likened gay people to pedophiles and those who practiced incest. But that was another Aravosis Freakout Special, and the brief really said (in that section) that states had varying standards pertaining to consanguinity, which meant that there was in fact precedent for marriages that were deemed valid in one state to be deemed invalid in another.
I also think that marriage law is completely fucking ridiculous, and the Justice Department under the FlipYrWhig Administration would have been instructed to revise and resubmit. There was language in there (IIRC) about states’ commitments to “traditional marriage” that seemed to buy that “traditional marriage” was best, and that’s offensive for a number of reasons. But the “incest and pedophilia” point looks a lot less shocking when you look at the actual document. Aravosis counts on his readers _not_ doing that, presuming his good faith.
He has no good faith. Kryptik had a truly spot-on typo, if it _was_ a typo, above: “I used to react Americablog on a daily basis.” John Aravosis doesn’t read, he reacts, and only according to the foreordained script that he must be the first and loudest complaining voice, because that makes him consequential to, like, anything. He’s a charlatan. People should stop paying any fucking attention to him.
cmorenc
@Zifnab
I agree here that assaultive crimes which happen to be committed against gay people, regardless of motivation, are already adequately covered by statutory and common-law criminal provisions.
Where breaking down motivation, and the types of hateful motivation in particular, IS useful is in determining sentencing factors. Someone who goes out of their way to beat a person up silly because the victim is gay, um…ok so the politically correct word here is “because of their sexual orientation”…do deserve to have that considered as a significant aggravating factor toward a harsher sentence than say, someone who beats a person up silly in a bar because they think the person said something insulting to them. Not that the latter is any excuse to let the perp off scott-free.
As backwards, narrow-minded and reprehensible as it is for someone to say things about gay folks EEP! sorry, “about folks because of their sexual orientation”, that reflect a bigoted bad attitude toward them, I don’t much like the idea of potentially blurring the line between criminalizing the saying of things that truly do amount to physical threats vs the saying of things that merely reflect a bigoted attitude, unless the degree or type of verbal harassment is such that it would be considered unacceptably provacative disorderly conduct regardless of what subject the incident was nominally focused on. Yes, if the perp was going into the sort of territory that reasonable people would consider trying to provoke and escalate a confrontation, then they SHOULD be prosecuted, regardless of what their evil mood is based upon. But you don’t need special hate-crimes legislation to recognize when someone’s trying to pick a fight or induce others to gang up against a target person in a potential developing confrontation.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Zifnab:
Because if you were walking down the street with a white girl they would have never even thought of beating you up.
Really, is that so difficult to understand?
gex
It always amazes me that Sully’s angriest gay activism is directed at Democrats and not Republicans. Enable conservatism every step of the way, and then scream bloody murder when there isn’t political space to go way left of gay rights. I don’t read him any more. Typical conservative idiot who only makes exceptions to ideology when it is his private peccadillo at issue.
cmorenc
OOPS the blockquote gremlin strikes again. The
“I just don’t understand why unprovoked violent crime needs to be chopped up and categorized” should have been in the blockquote from Zinfab, rather than appearing to be part of my words in response.
THERE IS one argument I can buy FOR special hate-crimes legislation, despite the position outlined in my previous post: that many prosecutors and judges (and perhaps jury members) need to be hit with a legal two-by-four before they’ll be ready to properly apply regular criminal statutes to bigot-motivated assaults etc based on the victim’s sexual orientation. Even though in principle, existing law does already cover it.
gex
@Zifnab: The point of hate crimes legislation is to prevent situations where “all the random beatings up of people” happen to black people, or gay people, etc. The issue behind hate crimes is not that there is an individual being targeted, but the targeting of that individual is meant to send a message to others in that group. It is much different to go into an area where there’s just random crime and become a victim than it is to be a gay person or a black person who will end up a victim of a crime, not by random, but because you are the wrong kind of person. It is intended to discourage that kind of violence. You may agree on whether it is effective or not, but I do really think there is a difference between random violence and getting specifically targeted because you date a black woman.
Mike in SLO
Kudos to John for his growing maturity in dealing with Gay issues. He is right that jokes about assless chaps, however funny and well intended they may be, do nothing but perpetuate tired, stale stereotypes of being Gay.
Kudos also that he is slowly realizing the utter vapidness of Andrew Sullivan. A true fake intellectual if ever there was one. He reminds me of the son in “The Squid and the Whale” (if you’ve ever seen that depressingly sad movie).
And finally Kudos for realizing that Andrew Sullivan and the folks at AmericaBlog in no way represent or speak for the vast majority of us gay people. They just are the loudest and get the most attention, unfortunately!
Sean
@gex:
Thank You!
Andrew Sullivan is a pathologically dishonest, hypocritical douche-bag of the first-order (and second and third orders as well).
The only thing he is consistently correct about is the short memory span of his readers.
-S
Martin
It isn’t.
The problem occurs when local police wave off the beating as ‘well, I guess he had it coming’ and decides to not investigate and prosecute. That’s what the legislation is designed to do – to make sure that there is always an advocate for the victim, even when local attitudes agree with the perpetrators.
Remember, hate crimes legislation was born when you had the governor of a state personally preventing the law from being applied, and using all the powers of his office to back him up.
Now, how strenuously do you think local law enforcement in some states would act to keep abortion clinics open if it wasn’t a federal law to keep them open? How strenuously do you think that police that have been harassing gay bars around the south this year would prosecute attacks on gays? And remember, this isn’t just a question of the willingness of the police, but also of the community. Palin refused to provide rape kits in Alaska. The police can be denied the resources they need by politicians to investigate and prosecute the kinds of cases they don’t want pursued.
Now, perhaps the more straightforward solution here would be to make murder, rape, etc. all be federal crimes, but that’s a massive change to how our government works. Instead, we just get a federal check against state and local efforts.
And the ‘all crime is a hate crime’ argument is a right-wing frame, designed to avoid discussion of the real issue.
Ruckus
I wonder if those who don’t understand hate crime legislation are just not in a group who is directly affected by it.
I am a white, straight male. How much am I affected by this law, from the perspective of a victim? I think not much directly. I may get beaten and robbed or murdered in a random act. Or I may piss off someone enough to have them attack me. But they are not going to attack me because I am gay or black or female or latino or …….
But from a perspective of community these attacks happen to all of us. We are all responsible because if we don’t try to change the process of hate and difference then we are saying that hate crimes are OK.
As a community, especially the community of the US, which is supposed to stand for/allow difference, we have to stand against those who attack us for our individualism. These types of laws are us telling each other that these beatings and murders are not alright, are not acceptable. They will not make things better overnight. They will not make people more tolerant or understanding overnight. But they are the tools by which we can make change.
Cat G
@kay: Good analysis. A couple of years ago someone painted “Jews” in red paint on the side of my white brick house. It was really really creepy. Just like other people I’ve had cars and houses vandalized in the past, and it had been just random property crime. When I saw what had been painted, it felt deeply personal.. One of my first thoughts was whether it was someone in my neighborhood who hated me. It made me feel really vulnerable, and suspicious. I was advised to report it to the police & to the local synagogue which I did. The local police department (Portland, OR) sent a “peace officer” (remember when we called them that?) who really was a peace officer. He was well trained and calming. The female rabbi who called was very professional. This will sound odd, but it was a very interesting experience, and I’ve changed my opinion of hate crime laws. They are crimes/threats to the fabric of community and social bonds. It felt really deeply and personally threatening. And by the way – I’m not Jewish. All I got was the tiniest peek into what it might feel like to be a member of a hated group.
Ruckus
@Cat G:
All I got was the tiniest peek into what it might feel like to be a member of a hated group.
This was the point of my post above yours. You are not even a member of the group that is hated and still you were violated. If you never had been violated would that level of understanding be the same? Not saying that you don’t understand, just the level of exposure is different.
John Sears
@Comrade Dread: Even if you do assume that law enforcement at the local level will always protect everyone equally (ha), and that if they fail to do so their state will cover it (ha), and that if they fail to do so the feds would step in of their own accord (ha), and that if they fail to do so the Supreme Court would right the wrong somehow… a decade later perhaps… after a long series of appeals that costs millions of dollars, per case, to conduct… and somehow gets picked as one of the tiny handful of cases the S Court hears a year….
It still doesn’t address the fact that criminals who commit crimes out of hatred of a minority group are inherently more dangerous to society, and that fighting this type of crime requires additional resources and differing procedures than fighting a random assault or murder. Precisely the same way, in fact, that fighting terrorists does.
Or should we abandon all the domestic terror laws too, and leave them to the equal protection clause as well?
ruemara
@Zifnab:
Because when they beat you up for holding hands with a black girl you may not get decent police treatment and a fair legal hearing because the police and the local law all think you shouldn’t be dating outside your race. Or they can’t afford to prosecute what is not just a crime against you, it’s you being made an example of for any other mixed race couple.
Not so SAT sorta SQ.
mcc
Because when Hypothetical Confederates beat you up they’re really doing two different things at once. One, they are committing bodily harm to you. But two, they are sending an implicit message to everyone who might in future be walking down the street holding a black girl/dude’s hand, saying: this is what will happen to you. The act isn’t just an act of violence, it’s also a threat. This threat isn’t as bad a thing as the actual beating, but it’s still socially corrosive, and the state has both a legitimate interest in acting against such threats and the right to treat a credible threat like this as a criminal act.
Max
Next up for Sully…
the Maine referendum, should it fail, will be because of Obama’s lack of support.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/in-maine-obama-could-make-the-difference.html
gwangung
@Max: Oh, good grief.
Max
@gwangung: I think it’s a parody at this point. He can’t be serious.
I broke a heel on my fav pair of pumps this morning. Goddamn Obama! :)
Comrade Dread
Not remotely what I was suggesting.
I don’t think we’ve proven that. Hate crimes, at least the ones we see on television, are not generally methodically planned out within shadow organizations with the purpose of instilling fear and compliance in the targeted group. They used to be back in the heyday of the KKK. And, if they were, I would imagine that the FBI’s counter-terrorism jurisdiction would give them the top dog status.
Now, they seem (and again, this is ancedotally) to be more the kind of in the heat of moment crimes where drunken, stupid, and/or degenerate asses run out and decide to kill one of dem folks.
4tehlulz
@Max: NEGRO(ES) DID QUESTION 1.
Warren Terra
A number of commenters upthread have already admirably handled one aspect of this: that hate-crimes legislation enable the feds to step in when they don’t believe that local law-enforcement will diligently pursue such crimes.
Another aspect that’s been touched on a few times, but to a lesser degree (mostly by applying the term “terrorism”, accurately in my opinion), is that of signaling the government’s intent, that certain types of crimes are particularly damaging to our society and deserve a special response. This is why we have different grades of assault and of murder, to take the most basic example: the more premeditated and more brutal the offense, the more seriously it’s handled. This is why there are special laws for killing a representative of law-enforcement even though killing a civilian is no less an act of murder. And this is why the federal government has now announced that it takes it especially seriously when people assault the fabric of our society by victimizing people on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual identity, or disability. Yes, such actions are already covered by existing laws – but the message of special attention being paid is still important.
Mnemosyne
This afternoon here in Los Angeles, two men were shot in the parking lot of their synagogue.
They haven’t found the perpetrator, and all of the other synagogues and Jewish centers in the area are on high alert.
But, hey, it’s no different than if a random robbery happened, so why should all of those other synagogues go on alert? It’s not like there’s a history of Jews being targeted for violence in the US or anything.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Dread:
I think we may have a different definition of “heat of the moment” crimes. I’m pretty sure that picking up your gun and driving to the local mosque to pick off a few Mooslims isn’t a “heat of the moment” crime the way finding your wife in bed with another man and shooting him is a “heat of the moment” crime.
Generally speaking, once you transport yourself from one location to another, it no longer counts as “heat of the moment.”
JadedOptimist
@bago:
My first pair of chaps were so badly made they probably qualified as half-assed. They came from Sears, of all places. On clearance.
Steeplejack
@tripletee:
My proposed solution:
Chaps in pride parades: pronounced “chaps.”
Chaps worn at rodeos: pronounced “shaps.”
Steeplejack
@tripletee:
By the way, “pantless chaps” sounds like some guys in a P.G. Wodehouse novel. At the Drones Club, maybe.