Are you aware of the actual content of hate crime laws?

Anybody who considers Barack Obama’s policies a “radical leftist gay agenda” is already demonstrably off his rocker.

The notion behind a hate crime is that it’s already a crime—assault, for instance—but that the choice of victim is based on bias on the part of the perpetrator, and so the penalty is increased. The Supreme Court has held that hate crimes are not a violation of free speech, because the increased penalty is, like the difference between first and second degree murder, or the difference between murder and manslaughter, a reflection of the motive.

Mr Huckabee can think, say, write, publish, and broadcast anything he cares to about gay people, or black people, or atheists. That’s thought, and it isn’t prosecuted. If he takes a baseball bat to an atheist’s skull solely because he is an atheist, then considering his state of mind at the time of sentencing is reasonable.

You cannot be charged with a crime for hating people. You can have your sentence increased for committing a crime against a person in a group you hate solely because you hate them.

It sounds like you need a better source of information than Mr Huckabee.

I didn’t understand what hate crime was before and i certainly don’t understand now… I’m off to do a bit of swatting up and then i’ll be back… i don’t know a huge amount about Obama’s policies either… so it’s not really clear for me who is saying what here…and who you have a problem with…if you indeed have a problem and are we talking about the sentencing of hate crime in general here or a specific case…. will be back…swatted up

oh…and what is Obama’s “radical leftist gay agenda” exactly? now that i understand what hate crime is…

You lost me at, “Barack Obama’s radical leftist gay agenda.”

And I am unaware of anyone that has been prosecuted for a “thought crime.”

@lynneblundel: http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/civil_rights/

In some people’s view (including Huckabee) the idea that gay and lesbian people should not be discriminated against in the workplace is a “radical leftist gay agenda.”

So wait, how does this fit in with his ‘radical leftist gay agenda’? How can his views be called radical if he’s still got that old school biggoted thinking where he’s against same sex marriage?

I mostly posed this question because I needed affirmation that Mike Huckabee is willfully and repeatedly lying about hate crimes in an attempt to drum up hatred against LGBT people.

And just to answer all of the questions posed by my post…

“Hate crimes” are handled either as a more severe version of an offense (Hate-motivated battery as a separate offense from battery), and in other states as an aggravating circumstance of a preexisting offense (such as aggravated battery with hate). You can think absolutely anything about anyone that you want, and it’s not a violation of any law. It’s a hate crime when you decide to commit a violent act against an individual, solely or predominantly based on hatred against that person’s real or perceived group membership.

Again, I mostly posed this question because I was completely and utterly dumbstruck by (1) Mike Huckabee’s baldfaced lying in order to incite hatred against gay people, and (2) Fox News’ giving him a platform upon which to do it.

Edit: the “radical gay leftist agenda” was language taken directly from the clip from Huckabee’s show.

This is a very interesting debate that was actually big in Germany while I was living there (referring to Neo-nazi groups).

In my view, there are 3 different stages:

1. “wrong” thoughts. This is something you can’t really help, and even though a society can decide to promote a certain way of thinking (eg religious, communist, patriarchal, racist, egalitarian, feminist) through education, some of its member might for whatever reason have a different opinion. Without even going into the discussion about whether this opinion might be right, a society that wants to call itself “free” should allow such thoughts. Especially since people do not really have control over what they think.

2. Peolpe voicing their opinions (freedom of speech). This is the grey area that everyone has been trying to legislate. Ok, you are free to be gay, and you are free to hate gays, but to what extend can you voice these thoughts? Should racist newspapers be allowed to be printed? What about satanist websites? Or a group of people meeting to discuss “the joys of paedophilia”? And should these people be allowed to voice their thoughts in a public (peaceful) demonstration? Where does their freedom of speech end? And when is an insult a crime? Where is the balance between cencorship and politeness?

3. (Violent) action, which is almost always illegal, even if the law is not always implemented.

So it’s a different thing to simply hate gays, to make a website against gays, and to try and exterminate gays.

@Jack79, yeah, but sometimes category 2 bleeds into 3. For instance, holding a KKK rally, after which an African American person is murdered. Is the speaker that called for that person to be murdered, and told the listeners how to murder him, simply exercising his 1st amendment rights, or committing an unlawful act?

Is it a first amendment right to call in a bomb threat or tell someone on a plane that you’re armed?

exactly why I called it a “grey area”. A website promoting hate crimes may actually be inciting them, but if you close it down, then how can you protect freedom of speech? And of course you have to start by defining what you consider to be “proper values”.

I’ll give you an example: a few years ago when I lived in Greece the police captured a terrorist group called “17N”. They had been at large for years, having carried out many successful attacks. There was a big debate whether they should be treated as political prisoners (like the former dictators that are currently serving life sentences) or common criminals. It wouldn’t really matter, since they would end up in jail for life either way, but since their motives were in fact political, many people felt that they should be taken to the same ward as the dictators, for crimes agaist the state. But since one of their victims had been a minister’s husband, she decided to throw them in with the common criminals who had killed for financial gain, and therefore strip them of their political arguements for their actions (it is important to note here that, even though most Greeks disagree with the actions, they generally agree with the underlying principle of the particular group).

After that was over, the police turned to anarchist thinkers and various leftist groups that were very loosely affiliated to 17N, in the sense that they believed in similar things, but had never actually carried out terrorist attacks. Most members of the public felt that this was taking things too far. I no longer live in Greece, so I don’t know what happened to this second group of people.