I’ve read a fair bit on both sides of the question. I do understand the motivation behind the creation of hate crimes. I just don’t agree with it. Is that allowed?
I resent the implication that to oppose separate hate crime laws marks one as a racist or bigot.
Isn’t that a distinction without a difference? Whether you legally allow certain kinds of hate to count as an aggravating factor when punishing “normal” crimes, or whether you create new offences that are the same as existing ones except for motive and punishment scale, the end result is the same: the motivation behind the commission of similar acts affects the punishment that act incurs.
I don’t see how, unless you fear the criminalisation of the sheer emotion of hate itself, separate from any act it may motivate: e.g., the prosecution of people for just sitting alone in a darkened room silently fulminating against trans or gay or black people. I don’t think anyone’s proposing that.
Since you say you understand, what do you think the motivation is?
It’s not a separate class of crime. You’ve stated this repeatedly, and this is wrong. It’s no crime to hate someone for any reason. Using this hatred as a motivator for something that is a crime, on the other hand, is considered more heinous in the eyes of the law. It’s quite simply a multiplier to an existing crime.
To put it another way, there wouldn’t be mass outrage if you vandalized a Starbucks, for example. Vandalizing a synagogue, on the other hand…
Haine sans frontières 
Which is it, you’re against criminalizing thoughts, or you’re against criminalizing effects?
Maybe you’re just against criminalizing transbashing?
What an interesting phrase.
Yeah, so not joining this conversation further, seeing as I’m one of the potential targets.
I’d hate that someone was offended by my being stabbed and stuff…
I’d very much take issue with you being stabbed.
YOU might. That I appreciate. 
I definitely would. So please avoid that. 
Yeah. Some of the commentary and thought process in this thread…
Alan gets through so many tables I bet he’s on his third Ikea loyalty card this year…
For sure - sometimes, to paraphrase the kids who can’t finish a bloody sentence, “I can’t even.”
Do you also object to crimes being considered terrorism? It has many of the same hallmarks and aims. I find it interesting that when it is a minority attacking random individuals due to where they live, no one has an issue about calling it terrorism. However as soon as it is a person in the majority attacking a minority for who they are, then all of a sudden people have trepidations about labelling the act. It is so intellectually dishonest.
I think if someone commits a crime that is intended to strike fear into the heart of a group of people, in this case trans people, that’s a hate crime. Can someone murder a member of a minority group and have it not be a hate crime - sure. Killing your spouse for insurance money is a murder and is terrible but it isn’t a hate crime even if your spouse is a different race than you.
The part I was confused by here is that the victim was killed by her girlfriend (?) That implies to me that maybe there might be a reason beyond that the person was trans. I don’t know the details of the case enough to say if it is a hate crime.
The fact that 1) two other teens participated in the killing and 2) the victim was stabbed in the genitals certainly support the “the victim’s gender identity was a primary motive for the killing” theory.
I agree that avoiding an Orwellian slippery slope is advisable. Punishing behavior is not exactly punishing outcome (see: no harm, no foul - oh how I hate this saying) or thought. So… I think this more closely approximates an objective version of my apoplectic wrath. Maybe.
P.S. I’d be a caring, but vengeful god
Let’s say it was in Texas, though. That way we get to be delightfully meta in hating and stereotyping a group for hating and stereotyping.
No, we don’t. There’s definitely an unfortunate tendency (one we should resist) to believe and/or speak as though this kind of violent hate is somehow only endemic to other people down below with funny accents, but that’s not even in the same league as the crime in question.
No one said or implied that and honestly, no one cares if you resent anything posted, especially if it’s in the parameters on the site ToS.
Hatred isn’t a crime; no negative emotions are. (To insinuate that’s what is meant by the distinction is to be intentionally disingenuous, IMO.)
Assaulting and/or murdering someone with the intent to send a message of intimidation to everyone else like that person are crimes, and they are made even worse because the damage doesn’t just affect the individual victim, but their whole community.
This has been explained repeatedly on this thread, it’s not that difficult a concept to grasp.
There is a Missouri City in Texas.
I have nothing clever to add to that at this time.
The Americas framed as a Western culture is itself an imperialist position, rife with its own unfortunate implications.
ETA: FFS, let me respond to somebody’s post without getting exclusionary. I did explain in a subsequent post how it was relevant to the present discussion.
