Reply #29: One reason I find hate crimes very logical is because of this:

[AP]

Often a victim of cirme, although innocent, does something that leads to the crime. Yes, many victims are in the wrong place at the wrong time. But some chose to be in the wrong place and then suffere the consequences: you don't pay your bookie and your bookie breaks your legs; you go to a bar, get drunk, mouth off, and get into a fight; you give someone the finger on the highway and they shoot at you.

Hate crimes are especially shitty for the victims because you have done nothing at all wrong. You're being yourself in a place you're allowed to be, and for a reason you shouldn't be required to change, someone cracks your skull.

It's like rape. We don't treat rape like we treat battery. It's a separate, more serious crime, and the victim is often only a victim because of geneder and nothing else. You want to give people a lot of time in prison if they are inclined to pick on victims who have done nothing to them other than just exist. You don't want to have a society where people have to repress their indentities and their immutable characteristics out of fear of psychopaths who rape, beat up black people and bash gay people. You have to do a little more to dissuade crap like that: thus hate crimes.

And the law makes all sorts of distinctions in criminal law based on different sorts of motives and mental states behind actions.

It's very important to realize that a hate crime isn't a thought crime. It's an action which is punnished to a higher degree because of the motive and mental state of the defendant -- and that's basically the story of criminal law: the time you get depends on the action + mental state.

A thought hate crime is where you think about beating up a black person because he's black but you don't do it.