Reply #61: you're mistaking what "equal" means in this context

[BigMcLargehuge]

when the first hate crime laws were employed, to bust and convict the seven guys responsible for the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi because "violating their civil rights" was a federal charge and not a state charge of murder, of which they would have been acquitted, it sent a message to Klan members in mississippi that they could get prison time for continuing to burn down black churches and lynch black people.

The white southerners in the Klan didn't consider the blacks (or jews) as equals, BUT the hate crime law elevated the victims to equal status with that of their murderers. The point isn't to make one person serve more time for being a gay basher, it's meant to discourage OTHER gay bashers from bashing gays because the sentence is harsher.

As for random crime... it isn't meant to send a message to an entire and specific group. It's random. A crime of passion is a crime of passion, it isn't meant to send a message to all other unfaithful spouses (for example), but to punish that one spouse. That's a crime of passion.

You can't expect me to believe that you consider the activities of a Klan member who kills a black man for being out with a white woman to be the same as a husband who kills his wife's lover.

The overall motive is completely different.