Word: crimeeds
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...should this compartmentalization extend only to gender, race, religion, and sexual orientation? Religion, which is covered under existing hate-crime legislation, is as much a choice as ideology, so why not protect the latter? Should political leanings be placed under the umbrella of hate-crimes protections? Should this aegis be extended to include Neo-Nazis and Klansmen? Why not include hatred based upon weight, height, hair color, state of origin, sports-team affliation, or any other demographic characteristic under hate-crimes protections...
This inexorable ambiguity permeates all facets of what constitutes a hate crime, including the highly questionable notion that the repugnance of a crime escalates due to the intangible, unquantifiable impact that it has upon those to whom the perpetrator did nothing. Proponents of hate-crimes legislation posit that crimes committed against individuals due to their gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation are particularly heinous due to the fact that they intimidate and offend all members of those groups. But all crimes, by their very nature, intimidate and offend more than just the victims, for crimes are affronts to society...
Last week President Barack Obama signed into law a bill that expands federal hate-crime protection to include violent crimes committed on the basis of a victim’s sexual orientation. The definition of hate crime under existing legislation had only included crimes perpetrated because of a victim’s race, color, religion, or national origin. The passage of the hate-crimes law, named in honor of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student from Wyoming who was brutally murdered 11 years ago, was a long-overdue addition to a valuable set of protective laws...
...expanding its scope, Obama affirmed the continued need for hate-crime legislation. A hate crime should be treated distinctly from other offenses because of the particularly heinous nature of the act and because of its far-reaching implications. Perpetrators of hate crimes do not merely harm their victims—they inflict tremendous pain on the victim’s entire community. Hate crime generates feelings of fear and dismay that impact the lives of many more people than are directly affected by the crime itself. Unlike other crimes, a violent act committed against someone because of his race...
...Hate-crime legislation grew out of a long history of racial violence in America, during which violence was used as a way to intimidate and oppress African-Americans. Vicious crimes such as lynchings and beatings were intended to make the members of an entire racial group feel unwelcome and unsafe. The development of hate-crime legislation, beginning with the 1969 Federal Hate Crimes Law, became an important way to both discourage such acts and diminish the culture of prejudice and discrimination that often implicitly condoned them. The new hate-crimes law is an admirable continuation of efforts to curb bias...