Hate Crime == Thought Crime

22nd December 2007

posted in Politics, Society by themaiden |

We seem to be eating ourselves alive.

A WorldNetDaily article from March describes the concerns some US religious groups have over a particular piece of ‘hate crime’ legislation. The Bill in question this time around is H.R. 254. The concern is that the legislation “could be used to make criminals of those whose religious faith doesn’t endorse homosexuality” and that it essentially opens the door to a kind of thought policing.

While there is a strong strain of faith based persecution complex in the article– Christians are in no danger of being persecuted in this country but, in fact, typically do the persecuting– mostly I agree with them. This legislation is a bad idea. The bill in question, the David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, is effectively an attempt to legislate against particular attitude, particular beliefs. That is really quite frightening.

This bill does not stand alone though.

105th Congress: H.R. 3081: Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Status: Dead)
106th Congress: H.R. 77: Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Status: Dead)
106th Congress: H.R. 1082: Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Status: Dead)
107th Congress: H.R. 74: Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Status: Dead)
108th Congress: H.R. 80: Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Status: Dead)
109th Congress: H.R. 259: Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Status: Dead)

Thankfully, those bills are all dead but not all of them are. I’ve already commented on H.R. 1592, the Matthew Shepard Act.

What this means in no uncertain terms is that prosecution of a crime is at least partially dependent upon the opinions, the convictions, and the beliefs, of the person who committed the crime. There is no way to reasonably spin this as anything other than prosecution for ‘thought crime’. The law cannot concern itself with the underlying motivation for the crime, except for the issue of self-defense.

Human Rights and Matthew Shepard

And…

Yes, these acts are tragic. Yes, it is bigotry. But I cannot support ‘extra’ prosecution because of the opinions the criminals might hold. It is fundamental to my political principles, and I thought it was fundamental to the spirit that birthed the United States, that people get to believe whatever they want. This law spits in the face of that idea.

Human Rights and Matthew Shepard

I took a bit of abuse over that one, but I stand by the sentiments. The law has got to focus on actions, not on the contents of people’s heads. The latter is nothing less than thought crime legislation. I have criticized the weird logic of gay hate, against some very peculiar paranoia in several forms, and defended gay marriage– not once but twice and three times and four times and more times in fact. But I cannot get behind thought crime laws.

Law must 1) protect a person’s right to do whatever that person desires so long as 2) that behavior does not infringe upon another person’s ability to do the same. What a person thinks is not part of the equation. And it mustn’t be allowed to become part of the equation.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 at 8:36 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On December 22nd, 2007, the chaplain said:

I agree with you. This type of legislation tramples all over the right to freedom of conscience. Religion is not the only form of totalitarianism that people must guard themselves against (sorry for the bad grammar, the correct form looks and sounds too pretentious).

2 On December 22nd, 2007, themaiden said:

Chaplain,

The ‘correct’ grammar is actually Latin grammar forced onto the English language by pretentious grammarians.

3 On December 22nd, 2007, Stefan Monsaureus said:

I tend to agree with you that existing criminal statutes (against, for example, murder) are more than sufficient, and that trying to discern underlying motives is treacherous; however, the more I have thought about this issue, the more I am persuaded by arguments in favor of hate crime legislation. In particular, there may be some merit to public safety concerns and that such measures are necessary to protect against the possibility of disenfranchising certain groups.

At the risk of seeming naive, isn’t there already a substantial precedent for taking into account the circumstances surrounding a crime? Consider, for example, a set of facts where A shoots B, resulting in B’s death. The penalty for this act is mitigated by the situation; was it self-defense? an accident? a crime of passion? premeditated? done while in a delusional state? For that matter, assume only that A shoots B. That action is independent of the outcome, but the penalty is not (if the victim lives, it is assault; if the victim dies, it may be murder). So, we are already looking well beyond the objective description of the act itself.

As an analogy, the above may be off base. But, although my intuition tells me that superimposing hate crime legislation on other criminal statutes is unnecessary and contrary to preserving the freedom of conscience, I’m not so sure this issue is as simple as I once imagined it.

4 On December 23rd, 2007, themaiden said:

Stefan,

Hello.

Valid concerns. Circumstances do matter. Let’s consider the series of questions you asked.

The penalty for this act is mitigated by the situation; was it self-defense? an accident? a crime of passion? premeditated? done while in a delusional state?

Self-defense is arguably behavior. An accident is unintended consequences of behavior. Premeditation, while perhaps mental, has to be proven with reference to behavior. Those then we need not worry about. They are all covered by a not too strained consideration of behavior.

That leaves the delusional state and the crime of passion. These do concern mental states. The first of the two– the delusional state– depends upon the idea that the perpetrator acted without presence of mind. That is, it depends upon the idea that the person was insane at the time of the commission of the crime. Unless you argue that racists are paint-with-your-feces-on-the-wall mad, this doesn’t apply.

Now, the crime of passion? The crime of passion defense is really very similar to the previous one. It depends on the idea that the perpetrator lost his or her mind in the heat of the moment. As I understand it, the defense has no official legal standing in the US, though juries like a good tale of heartbreak and sometimes are swayed by them. The defense is also, if I may, scary close to the idea of ‘honor killing’. So, as you may have guessed, I’m not thrilled with this defense under any circumstances. Nonetheless, it doesn’t apply to hate crimes because hate crimes are motivated by long term attitudes, not by momentary passion.

To sum up, none of these concern a person’s attitudes in general. Most of them clearly concern behavior, with exceptions for, in effect, insanity.

Now, about insanity– a kind of side note: Even if you were to label racists et al. ‘insane’ the hate crimes legislation has still got it wrong. You don’t add jail time when someone is found insane. Instead, you require treatment. This option too is very ‘though crime’-like when applied to things like racism and religion.

5 On December 25th, 2007, pollux rees said:

That’s complete complete idiocy.

(That you could be against such bills)

6 On December 25th, 2007, themaiden said:

pollux,

I considered responding with snark and sarcasm but I’ll cut to the chase instead: Come up with something better than “Oh… man… yur stoopid dood” or just go home.

7 On December 28th, 2007, Lady Raven said:

Personal liberty includes the right to think wrong thoughts. That’s the only way we can assure first amendment rights. Hate Crimes laws are about repressing the first amendment. Besides, there is no such thing as a love crime.

8 On December 29th, 2007, themaiden said: