Hate Crime Laws Abolition Bill

[Emsworth]

Hate Crime Laws Abolition Bill

1. No crime shall be defined as a "hate crime."
2. The punishment imposed for a crime shall not be increased on the basis of the criminal's bias or prejudice against any particular race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or other class of persons.
3. The Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, the Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act of 1994, the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, and all amendments to those acts are hereby repealed.

Sponsor: Sen. MasterJedi

[Ebowed]

I strongly support this bill.

[John Dibble]

I strongly support this bill.

^^^^

[Gabu]

I have always been against the concept of hate crimes, and I see nothing otherwise troubling about this bill, so it sounds good to me.

[Emsworth]

As the co-author of this bill, I would like to announce my unequivocal support for this bill. I also thank Sen. MasterJedi for coming up with the idea in the first place, and for sponsoring the legislation.

[DanielX]

Ditto to every comment before.

[MasterJedi]

And of course I am for this since I came up with the idea and got Emsworth to give major help in writing it and introduced it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

While I don't like the idea of someone getting a longer sentance for, say, murder, simply because a crime is racially motivated is an especially good or clever idea, I do think that it's important to keep track of the number of racially motivated crimes and would like something doing that added to the bill.

[MasterJedi]

While I don't like the idea of someone getting a longer sentance for, say, murder, simply because a crime is racially motivated is an especially good or clever idea, I do think that it's important to keep track of the number of racially motivated crimes and would like something doing that added to the bill.

I wouldn't mind if you wrote and amendment like that and in fact would probably support it.

[MasterJedi]

Since Al really hasn't written anything to this I'll take a whack at it.


4. The Atlasian government shall keep track of the number of racially motivated crimes committed after the passage and implementation of this bill. 

[Ebowed]

Why do we need to do that?

[MasterJedi]

Why do we need to do that?

As Al said it let's us see how many crimes are racially motivated in Atlasia.

[Ebowed]

I still fail to see why we need to keep data on that.

[Defarge]

It appears I shall be the only one voting against this bill.  Pity.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I still fail to see why we need to keep data on that.

Because it's important to keep track of serious racial tensions

[Ebowed]

I disagree; racism and hatred are protected by freedom of thought and speech.  Only when one directly intimidates, not insults or offends, someone do we restrict that right.  We punish people for crimes anyway, no point in giving them a worse sentence because it was based on a hatred of a race, sexual orientation, religion, sex, or other characteristic.

Thus, the government keeping data or statistics on racially motivated crimes strikes me as a waste of time and undermines the purpose of this bill.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I disagree; racism and hatred are protected by freedom of thought and speech.

Simply keeping a list of how many crimes in a certain area were racially motivated does not trample on anyones constitutional rights.

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I'm not suggesting a worse sentence

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The government keeps track of a lot of statistics and publishes a lot of them. For good reason; people need to know these things.

[Ebowed]

I disagree; racism and hatred are protected by freedom of thought and speech.

Simply keeping a list of how many crimes in a certain area were racially motivated does not trample on anyones constitutional rights.

I'm aware that it does not trample anyone's rights directly, but keeping track of 'racial tensions' in certain areas strikes me as ripe for abuse if done improperly.

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I'm not suggesting a worse sentence

I know, I was just saying that the amendment would undermine the purpose of the bill, which is to eliminate worse sentences for crimes based on hate

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm aware that it does not trample anyone's rights directly, but keeping track of 'racial tensions' in certain areas strikes me as ripe for abuse if done improperly.

But not monitoring that situation would be a gross failure of Government's duty to protect the people. If you don't bother to watch this sort of thing you end up with things spiralling out of control, and before you know what's hit you, you get riots.
At the same time I think a black familiy is entitled to know if the community they're about to move to has a serious problem with racially motivated crimes.

[MasterJedi]

Al has been making good points, especially in his latest post.

[Ebowed]

I'm aware that it does not trample anyone's rights directly, but keeping track of 'racial tensions' in certain areas strikes me as ripe for abuse if done improperly.

But not monitoring that situation would be a gross failure of Government's duty to protect the people. If you don't bother to watch this sort of thing you end up with things spiralling out of control, and before you know what's hit you, you get riots.
At the same time I think a black familiy is entitled to know if the community they're about to move to has a serious problem with racially motivated crimes.

How would this data be available to the general public?

Also what about crimes motivated on hatred of sexual orientation, religion, or sex?  Would we have to keep data on those too?

[MasterJedi]

I'm aware that it does not trample anyone's rights directly, but keeping track of 'racial tensions' in certain areas strikes me as ripe for abuse if done improperly.

But not monitoring that situation would be a gross failure of Government's duty to protect the people. If you don't bother to watch this sort of thing you end up with things spiralling out of control, and before you know what's hit you, you get riots.
At the same time I think a black familiy is entitled to know if the community they're about to move to has a serious problem with racially motivated crimes.

How would this data be available to the general public?

Also what about crimes motivated on hatred of sexual orientation, religion, or sex?  Would we have to keep data on those too?

It could be available via internet or other sources.

No not with this bill. This bill deals with hate crimes. If someome wanted to they could make a bill that would add to said database with those others but I seriously doubt that would happen.

[Ebowed]

If you beat up someone because he's gay, how is that not a hate crime?

Unless we extend this policy of keeping data on racially motivated crimes to also keeping data on crimes that were done based on hatred of sexual orientation it would be discriminatory.

[MasterJedi]

If you beat up someone because he's gay, how is that not a hate crime?

Unless we extend this policy of keeping data on racially motivated crimes to also keeping data on crimes that were done based on hatred of sexual orientation it would be discriminatory.

1. That's why I entered this bill and it says "racially motivated hate crimes" in my amendment.

2. How is giving people information discriminatory?

We know you'll vote against it and Al and I will vote for it. Why don't you try with other people to defeat the amendment then instead of arguing and not getting anywhere?

[Ebowed]

If you give black families moving into neighborhoods information about the racially motivated crimes that occured there, it is only fair to give gay people the same information regarding anti-gay motivated crimes.  Therefore your amendment is discriminatory in that it only extends to racially motived crimes.

I won't stop voicing my opinions just because I know people disagree with me.