I've been told over and over again that inaction is neither morally nor legally the same as action. So you can watch a child drown and can't be charged with a crime. Or you can watch some people beat the hell out a drag queen and not be morally responsible, long as you do not help. Doing nothing to intervene is not the same as helping or advocating
I know it isn't a crime to not intervene, but isn't it an (albeit minor) crime to not call 111?
I've been told over and over again that inaction is neither morally nor legally the same as action. So you can watch a child drown and can't be charged with a crime*. Or you can watch some people beat the hell out a drag queen and not be morally responsible, long as you do not help. Doing nothing to intervene is not the same as helping or advocating.
*Parents are required by law to at least attempt to save their minor children from harm.
They are not taking action, but they are doing more than inaction. If Jedit is right, they verbally, indeed declaratively, condone the act's consequences - which is just enough moral support, I believe, to repeal the moral immunity you mention. It is an immunity we give because we decide it is no crime not to be a hero. Giving moral support is too much not to warrant a different treatment than people who remain assuredly out of the issue.
Interesting about parents. I suppose what that is, is a legal codification of the widespread expectation that a parent will, to the point of madness (okay, hyperbolically speaking), protect its young - this law exists to call attention to what the common sense would say is disturbingly wrong. Even though it's completely discriminatory, you'll never simply believe without inquiry that a parent did not try to save his child and that there's no mental or criminal illness behind this.
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Yes...theoretically. But there are cases where people are beaten or murdered (not to mention more psychological forms of violence) simply because they are of such-and-such minority group. The normal legal distinctions for murder get fuzzy, because the criminal's motivation boils down simply to an irrational hatred of that group.
Surely there should be some sort of legal category to encompass this sort of a crime.
Are you suggesting that there need be different punishment for such crime? Otherwise, I see no need for such a distinction.
Also, what would you say about speech that incites someone to commit a crime against a specific group? Does that deserve its own special category, or should it be grouped with subornation in general?
I think Horseshoe Hermit summed it up quite accurately. They may for the most part not be saying "Go thou forth and smite the sodomites for their wickedness", but they're sure as hell not unhappy when someone does and they're always ready to say that the victim brought it down upon himself with his ungodly ways.
Frankly, they're no different to the people who say that a woman who was raped deserved it because she had been drinking alcohol, dressing "trashy" or "hanging out with the wrong sort"; hardly surprising, because they often are those people. Such people may not actually be rapists or advocates of rape - though "the ***** was asking for it" is a common justification - but they're certainly well satisfied when it happens.
It's no less of an approval to say someone deserves to be hurt or raped or killed after it happens than it is to say so beforehand. And it's no less vile.
So is Nazism, but the rights of free speech and freedom of consciousness mean that neither are criminal. We don't go around punishing everyone we find distasteful.
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Well, that's where a lot of these things get fiddly. Generally, one of the reasons we have protections against hate speech is that even you get people virulently angry at/about the existence of a particular group, there's a strong possibility that they'll go out and attempt physical violence against said people. I mean, when certain evangelicals preach that homosexuals are abominations against God and have no right to exist, don't you think that some listeners are going to treat them as such? I'm not certain how you deal with this problem without recourse to such unethical and counterproductive tools as censorship, but there's a problem nonetheless.
It is a problem in general, in many fields in life, that people are very often wrong-headed and believe wrong-headed things. The inherent problem, if it's not already obvious, about trying to regulate that people believe the "right" thing, besides the moral implications, is that nothing's to prevent the government and laws in charge of such things from being wrong-headed. The best way we have to separate good ideas from bad is to let them clash freely. The good idea tends to win in a fair fight.
I think Horseshoe Hermit summed it up quite accurately. They may for the most part not be saying "Go thou forth and smite the sodomites for their wickedness", but they're sure as hell not unhappy when someone does and they're always ready to say that the victim brought it down upon himself with his ungodly ways.
It's clear you have no intimately personal experience with Evangelicals if your claim is that an Evangelical is "sure as hell" not sad when a homosexual dies and is "always ready" to blame the victim. How mindbogglingly ignorant of you.
Combatting bigoted stereotypes with bigoted stereotypes. Wonderful.
It's clear you have no intimately personal experience with Evangelicals if your claim is that an Evangelical is "sure as hell" not sad when a homosexual dies and is "always ready" to blame the victim. How mindbogglingly ignorant of you.
Combatting bigoted stereotypes with bigoted stereotypes. Wonderful.
It takes no intimately personal experience, but only a minimal amount of research, to discern that the attitudes and actions of Evangelicals towards homosexuals vary considerably. Conversely, intimately personal experience with a fringe group of Fred Phelps-like Evangelicals might persuade a person that Evangelicalism itself is a diseased and deranged position.
But of course, anyone is free to read for himself the words of the Bible, and to see what the words of Jesus Christ are to all Christians in regards to how we ought to treat our neighbors (and even our enemies).
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It is a problem in general, in many fields in life, that people are very often wrong-headed and believe wrong-headed things. The inherent problem, if it's not already obvious, about trying to regulate that people believe the "right" thing, besides the moral implications, is that nothing's to prevent the government and laws in charge of such things from being wrong-headed. The best way we have to separate good ideas from bad is to let them clash freely. The good idea tends to win in a fair fight.
I understand the principle, although, IMO, all ideas fall flat when confronted with religious principles, since asking a person to accept the idea is usually tantamount to forcing them to admit that their religion is fallible. Regardless, though, there are laws against suborning someone to commit a crime, and if someone preaches hatred against a particular group to the point where one of their adherents attacks a member of that group, that's subornation.
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I understand the principle, although, IMO, all ideas fall flat when confronted with religious principles, since asking a person to accept the idea is usually tantamount to forcing them to admit that their religion is fallible. Regardless, though, there are laws against suborning someone to commit a crime, and if someone preaches hatred against a particular group to the point where one of their adherents attacks a member of that group, that's subornation.
I cite the Apocalypse of Peter. It's apocrypha granted (not the Gnostic one), but in a nut shell it states that hell isn't truly perpetual since in the end all will be "saved." Omnibenevolence =! eternal damnation.
Religiously the only recourse that a church has is excommunication after deliberations with the person. The government from a legal stand point can only offer tax incentives for people to be gelded. Lower population, less homosexuality, less premarital sex, fewer resources wasted on welfare, and ect. The perfect marriage of social policy and economics and free choice.
Outside of excommunication (which is basically unheard of in this day and age) and creating a new class of free willed eunuchs. There's no realistic way to "deal" with homosexuality.
Really if people aren't willing to go balls to the walls with those maneuvers, they have no real right to debate the "immorality" of homosexuality. It's a hot potato social policy.
Call it 'civil unions' or Herman Munster for all I care, and move on with society to real issues.
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Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
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Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Regardless, though, there are laws against suborning someone to commit a crime, and if someone preaches hatred against a particular group to the point where one of their adherents attacks a member of that group, that's subornation.
So if a political group preaches against a government, and one of the followers of that movement commits an act of violence, logically, everyone in that group is suborning the government. Therefore, opposing the government is terrorism.
So if a political group preaches against a government, and one of the followers of that movement commits an act of violence, logically, everyone in that group is suborning the government. Therefore, opposing the government is terrorism.
Or a freedom fighter if through not following the will of people thereby breaking the social contract.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
The government from a legal stand point can only offer tax incentives for people to be gelded. Lower population, less homosexuality, less premarital sex, fewer resources wasted on welfare, and ect. The perfect marriage of social policy and economics and free choice.
My chief concern in such a case is that it would provoke a rash of people getting themselves spayed or neutered out of foolishness and/or desperation. Getting yourself fixed isn't exactly the kind of thing you can think twice about.
So if a political group preaches against a government, and one of the followers of that movement commits an act of violence, logically, everyone in that group is suborning the government. Therefore, opposing the government is terrorism.
...Oh. Well, perhaps I should modify that to "preaching in such a way that advocates or condones violence against persons?" Realistically, most people who oppose government actions in this country don't seriously call for violence, and most of those that do would qualify as terrorists, no? I'm trying to find a legally sound "happy medium" that allows people inciting violence to be prosecuted without inviting the potential for repressive abuse, which I consider to be an optimum solution. Free speech is always desirable in a vacuum, but when people are getting hurt or killed, I feel that the circumstances necessitate some kind of compromise.
@Captain Morgan: I really have no idea what you're getting at. Creating incentives for sterilization is one of the many population ways of dealing with overpopulation in a free society, but I have no idea what effect that would have on homosexuality or why you're connecting the church to the idea. Most churches I know would blow a gasket at the very thought of any sterilization program, voluntary or not.
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I hide myself within my flower
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
...Oh. Well, perhaps I should modify that to "preaching in such a way that advocates or condones violence against persons?"
And then define "condoning violence" to somehow include the groups you don't like?
I'm trying to find a legally sound "happy medium" that allows people inciting violence to be prosecuted without inviting the potential for repressive abuse, which I consider to be an optimum solution. Free speech is always desirable in a vacuum, but when people are getting hurt or killed, I feel that the circumstances necessitate some kind of compromise.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
There is no "happy medium" here. You're not really talking about outlawing incitement to violence, which is already illegal and has been for ages; you're trying to argue that people should be punished for any view that might lead to violent action. But war and politics are, as Fred Hampton observed, merely different forms of the same creature. Any political or social end can be pursued violently or peacefully (ironically, peace itself is very frequently used as a goal to justify violence- see what's going on in Georgia, for instance).
You're walking down a grim and winding road that ends in the Gulag.
There is no "happy medium" here. You're not really talking about outlawing incitement to violence, which is already illegal and has been for ages; you're trying to argue that people should be punished for any view that might lead to violent action. But war and politics are, as Fred Hampton observed, merely different forms of the same creature. Any political or social end can be pursued violently or peacefully (ironically, peace itself is very frequently used as a goal to justify violence- see what's going on in Georgia, for instance).
You're walking down a grim and winding road that ends in the Gulag.
First, I should have stated more clearly that said people could only be prosecuted if violence actually resulted from their actions - I'd stick to the principle of innocent until proven guilty. I understand that subornation is already illegal, but the law is rarely applied in the case of crimes against minorities, insofar as I know. Second, the "fallacy of the middle ground" is, like all pretty constructions of logic and overgeneralization, only occasionally applicable. Compromise runs this country, and when people refuse to compromise, nothing gets done. Similarly, the idea of the slippery slope is only sometimes applicable - it is perfectly possible to draw a line beyond which we, as a nation, will not go.
If you wish to start a war of competing authorities, let's bring up Hobbes, shall we? Order is a prerequisite for liberty, as evidenced by the failed democracies all across the world, and turning a blind eye to the sort of people who inflame and condone gay-bashing vigilantes (or lynch mobs, for that matter) is not acceptable in an orderly society. Rather, it restricts the liberty of the people who are vulnerable to attack because of something beyond their control, never mind threatening their lives. We occasionally compromise our liberties not out of ignorance of the gulag, but fear of the Reign of Terror.
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That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
Are you suggesting that there need be different punishment for such crime?
Different crime. Different punishment.
Bias crimes (sometimes called 'hate crimes') do not merely victimize one individual. They are targetted at an entire community. They are effectively a form of terrorism (dictionary.com: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes) designed to disrupt the ability of a whole community to participate in society.
Bias crimes (sometimes called 'hate crimes') do not merely victimize one individual. They are targetted at an entire community. They are effectively a form of terrorism (dictionary.com: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes) designed to disrupt the ability of a whole community to participate in society.
Is there a reason that 'intimidation' can't cover this segment of crime, and cover it better than 'hate crime' ever could?
Second, the "fallacy of the middle ground" is, like all pretty constructions of logic and overgeneralization, only occasionally applicable. Compromise runs this country, and when people refuse to compromise, nothing gets done.
It's funny because you hadn't actually committed the fallacy until youu wrote that.
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Against the groups I don't like? By the groups I don't like? I'm slightly confused here.
You want to classify fundamentalist Christians (and presumably Muslims) who dislike and condemn homosexuality as provoking violence based on the fact that people can take their words to mean that they should ignore social norms like non-violence and attack homosexuals. Does that clarify?
First, I should have stated more clearly that said people could only be prosecuted if violence actually resulted from their actions - I'd stick to the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
But warp the entire meaning of "proven guilty", I see.
I understand that subornation is already illegal, but the law is rarely applied in the case of crimes against minorities, insofar as I know.
The law is applied where it's applicable. When people directly suggest violent and criminal acts that then occur, they're liable to be held to account.
Second, the "fallacy of the middle ground" is, like all pretty constructions of logic and overgeneralization, only occasionally applicable. Compromise runs this country, and when people refuse to compromise, nothing gets done.
Those that are always willing to compromise soon find that they have nothing left to compromise with. There must be boundaries and lines where you refuse to compromise. If we gave a government the right to control "hateful" speech in public, wouldn't private be next? We could keep compromising down this road forever, until we all have cameras in our bedrooms.
Similarly, the idea of the slippery slope is only sometimes applicable - it is perfectly possible to draw a line beyond which we, as a nation, will not go.
Generally, this is only possible if there's a defining characteristic of the line. If the only thing marking the line is our position relative to it, it always tends to slide. If we crossed one line to alter the rules, why not do so again? Although it's not greatly applicable in this case, I agree, since your original suggestion is still actually pretty horrible, although you refuse to see it. Maybe it's because you think those that agree with you will always be the ones making the rules about what's okay to say or not?
If you wish to start a war of competing authorities, let's bring up Hobbes, shall we? Order is a prerequisite for liberty, as evidenced by the failed democracies all across the world, and turning a blind eye to the sort of people who inflame and condone gay-bashing vigilantes (or lynch mobs, for that matter) is not acceptable in an orderly society. Rather, it restricts the liberty of the people who are vulnerable to attack because of something beyond their control, never mind threatening their lives. We occasionally compromise our liberties not out of ignorance of the gulag, but fear of the Reign of Terror.
This is largely incoherent, and I'm not really sure how you're tying the Reign of Terror in with refusing to censor opposing viewpoints. Order is generic. Rule of law is what's actually necessary for liberty; economic and social freedoms, which are often chaotic, are also necessary. The same threat of punishment hangs over the head of all who would consider crimes against us, but beyond that we have to accept that in a free society, we may be attacked by those that would ignore consequences. There is no non-tyrannical way of solving this problem.
Bias crimes (sometimes called 'hate crimes') do not merely victimize one individual. They are targetted at an entire community. They are effectively a form of terrorism (dictionary.com: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes) designed to disrupt the ability of a whole community to participate in society.
But you see, this isn't the definition of a hate crime. The distinction between a hate crime and other crime is strictly one of motive: whether the act was motivated by the race/sex/orientation/whatever of the victim. The intent of the act, whether it be to intimidate or not, is irrelevant to this definition. A man could murder a black guy and, rather than use his crime to threaten and intimidate the black community (e.g. by leaving the body in a public place with a scary letter attached) do everything in his power to cover it up, and still he would be charged with a hate crime if it came up that the victim's blackness was a factor in his decision to kill.
This is why some of us oppose hate crime legislation: because it isn't a different crime, not necessarily. The only thing that has to be different about it is the conscience of the criminal, which according to the First Amendment is free and not to be criminalized. As FoolThemAll said, in the cases where a hate crime really is different than a regular crime in the manner you describe, we can call it "intimidation" or just plain "terrorism", and get the desired social effect without explicitly punishing people for their opinions.
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I'm simply opposed to the logical inconsistency of it. We punish crimes to deter them and to deliver justice, such as it is. Why should we provide more disincentive to commit one or the other form of murder? I would think that we want to discourage murder either way, and if there's an argument that it's more effective a deterrent if we slap more years on, then it ought to be across the board. If there isn't, it serves no function.
Intent should be considered when determining likelihood of repetition. In the same way, it should be considered with regard to issues of rehabilitation.
You want to classify fundamentalist Christians (and presumably Muslims) who dislike and condemn homosexuality as provoking violence based on the fact that people can take their words to mean that they should ignore social norms like non-violence and attack homosexuals. Does that clarify?
Alright, so I'll clarify/edit for the last time, since you've got me here. If anyone advocates violence against a minority group, if a crime is actually committed, and if a clear link between the one person's speech and the other person's action can be established beyond a reasonable doubt, then the person who spoke should be punished as well as the person who acted. Thank you for knocking my inner repressive utopianism back to where it belongs.
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Those that are always willing to compromise soon find that they have nothing left to compromise with. There must be boundaries and lines where you refuse to compromise. If we gave a government the right to control "hateful" speech in public, wouldn't private be next? We could keep compromising down this road forever, until we all have cameras in our bedrooms.
What annoys me about this argument is that people always focus on the compromises that didn't work at the expense of those that do. We have hate speech laws right now, and they generally work on the principle of whether or not they threaten violence. If you look way protesting at abortion clinics is regulated, you see an example of a working compromise between the ability of the protesters to voice their entirely legitimate condemnation of the procedure and the desire of the doctors and patients not to have a legally permissible procedure disrupted by protesting, never mind the entirely necessary protections against death threats. If the government banned the protesters, that would unfairly restrict free speech, but if it let them scream into the windows or attack women on their way inside the clinic, that would violate the property and physical sanctity of the doctors and patients. A balance, therefore, was teased out through legal compromise.
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Generally, this is only possible if there's a defining characteristic of the line. If the only thing marking the line is our position relative to it, it always tends to slide. If we crossed one line to alter the rules, why not do so again? Although it's not greatly applicable in this case, I agree, since your original suggestion is still actually pretty horrible, although you refuse to see it. Maybe it's because you think those that agree with you will always be the ones making the rules about what's okay to say or not?
I'm just going to point out that "the line" isn't a static thing - the American people haven't always considered free speech to mean everything we take it for today. It's not so much a slippery slope of steadily declining protections, as you seem to cast the matter, as a set of standards moving around. At the moment, many people think that one should be able to viciously attack the government and not be able to attack minority groups, but in the past, the standards worked in the opposite direction.
And yes, my initial suggestion was horrible because I didn't think it through properly, and you correctly chastised me on it. I've now compromised between my initial position in favor of something closer to what you believe and hopefully what the rest of the country wishes as well. I don't intend to be fascist, but my train of thought, like most people's, begins with "People shouldn't do this" and only later moves on to "I don't think people should do this, but the Constitution says that I, if I were a politician, could only limit it in such-and-such a way, if at all."
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This is largely incoherent, and I'm not really sure how you're tying the Reign of Terror in with refusing to censor opposing viewpoints. Order is generic. Rule of law is what's actually necessary for liberty; economic and social freedoms, which are often chaotic, are also necessary. The same threat of punishment hangs over the head of all who would consider crimes against us, but beyond that we have to accept that in a free society, we may be attacked by those that would ignore consequences. There is no non-tyrannical way of solving this problem.
Upon rereading, that was a bit incoherent; I usually don't intend to be that confrontational. I suppose what I mean to say is that people who can be shown to have broken existing subornation laws should be more effectively prosecuted - to make the "threat of punishment" a little more inclined to actually fall on their heads instead of floating in the metaphorical clouds of ignorance and apathy.
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That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
Intent should be considered when determining likelihood of repetition. In the same way, it should be considered with regard to issues of rehabilitation.
Hate/non-hate is a matter of motive, not intent, and in any case is a woefully insufficient classification to make for these purposes. They have to be determined on a crime-by-crime basis.
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I know it isn't a crime to not intervene, but isn't it an (albeit minor) crime to not call 111?
They are not taking action, but they are doing more than inaction. If Jedit is right, they verbally, indeed declaratively, condone the act's consequences - which is just enough moral support, I believe, to repeal the moral immunity you mention. It is an immunity we give because we decide it is no crime not to be a hero. Giving moral support is too much not to warrant a different treatment than people who remain assuredly out of the issue.
Interesting about parents. I suppose what that is, is a legal codification of the widespread expectation that a parent will, to the point of madness (okay, hyperbolically speaking), protect its young - this law exists to call attention to what the common sense would say is disturbingly wrong. Even though it's completely discriminatory, you'll never simply believe without inquiry that a parent did not try to save his child and that there's no mental or criminal illness behind this.
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Are you suggesting that there need be different punishment for such crime? Otherwise, I see no need for such a distinction.
No, I don't think it warrants its own group.
So is Nazism, but the rights of free speech and freedom of consciousness mean that neither are criminal. We don't go around punishing everyone we find distasteful.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
America remains, in this regard, one of the few civilized nations on Earth.
It is a problem in general, in many fields in life, that people are very often wrong-headed and believe wrong-headed things. The inherent problem, if it's not already obvious, about trying to regulate that people believe the "right" thing, besides the moral implications, is that nothing's to prevent the government and laws in charge of such things from being wrong-headed. The best way we have to separate good ideas from bad is to let them clash freely. The good idea tends to win in a fair fight.
It's clear you have no intimately personal experience with Evangelicals if your claim is that an Evangelical is "sure as hell" not sad when a homosexual dies and is "always ready" to blame the victim. How mindbogglingly ignorant of you.
Combatting bigoted stereotypes with bigoted stereotypes. Wonderful.
It takes no intimately personal experience, but only a minimal amount of research, to discern that the attitudes and actions of Evangelicals towards homosexuals vary considerably. Conversely, intimately personal experience with a fringe group of Fred Phelps-like Evangelicals might persuade a person that Evangelicalism itself is a diseased and deranged position.
But of course, anyone is free to read for himself the words of the Bible, and to see what the words of Jesus Christ are to all Christians in regards to how we ought to treat our neighbors (and even our enemies).
I understand the principle, although, IMO, all ideas fall flat when confronted with religious principles, since asking a person to accept the idea is usually tantamount to forcing them to admit that their religion is fallible. Regardless, though, there are laws against suborning someone to commit a crime, and if someone preaches hatred against a particular group to the point where one of their adherents attacks a member of that group, that's subornation.
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
I cite the Apocalypse of Peter. It's apocrypha granted (not the Gnostic one), but in a nut shell it states that hell isn't truly perpetual since in the end all will be "saved." Omnibenevolence =! eternal damnation.
Religiously the only recourse that a church has is excommunication after deliberations with the person. The government from a legal stand point can only offer tax incentives for people to be gelded. Lower population, less homosexuality, less premarital sex, fewer resources wasted on welfare, and ect. The perfect marriage of social policy and economics and free choice.
Outside of excommunication (which is basically unheard of in this day and age) and creating a new class of free willed eunuchs. There's no realistic way to "deal" with homosexuality.
Really if people aren't willing to go balls to the walls with those maneuvers, they have no real right to debate the "immorality" of homosexuality. It's a hot potato social policy.
Call it 'civil unions' or Herman Munster for all I care, and move on with society to real issues.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
So if a political group preaches against a government, and one of the followers of that movement commits an act of violence, logically, everyone in that group is suborning the government. Therefore, opposing the government is terrorism.
Or a freedom fighter if through not following the will of people thereby breaking the social contract.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
My chief concern in such a case is that it would provoke a rash of people getting themselves spayed or neutered out of foolishness and/or desperation. Getting yourself fixed isn't exactly the kind of thing you can think twice about.
...Oh. Well, perhaps I should modify that to "preaching in such a way that advocates or condones violence against persons?" Realistically, most people who oppose government actions in this country don't seriously call for violence, and most of those that do would qualify as terrorists, no? I'm trying to find a legally sound "happy medium" that allows people inciting violence to be prosecuted without inviting the potential for repressive abuse, which I consider to be an optimum solution. Free speech is always desirable in a vacuum, but when people are getting hurt or killed, I feel that the circumstances necessitate some kind of compromise.
@Captain Morgan: I really have no idea what you're getting at. Creating incentives for sterilization is one of the many population ways of dealing with overpopulation in a free society, but I have no idea what effect that would have on homosexuality or why you're connecting the church to the idea. Most churches I know would blow a gasket at the very thought of any sterilization program, voluntary or not.
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
And then define "condoning violence" to somehow include the groups you don't like?
Fallacy of the Middle Ground.
There is no "happy medium" here. You're not really talking about outlawing incitement to violence, which is already illegal and has been for ages; you're trying to argue that people should be punished for any view that might lead to violent action. But war and politics are, as Fred Hampton observed, merely different forms of the same creature. Any political or social end can be pursued violently or peacefully (ironically, peace itself is very frequently used as a goal to justify violence- see what's going on in Georgia, for instance).
You're walking down a grim and winding road that ends in the Gulag.
Against the groups I don't like? By the groups I don't like? I'm slightly confused here.
First, I should have stated more clearly that said people could only be prosecuted if violence actually resulted from their actions - I'd stick to the principle of innocent until proven guilty. I understand that subornation is already illegal, but the law is rarely applied in the case of crimes against minorities, insofar as I know. Second, the "fallacy of the middle ground" is, like all pretty constructions of logic and overgeneralization, only occasionally applicable. Compromise runs this country, and when people refuse to compromise, nothing gets done. Similarly, the idea of the slippery slope is only sometimes applicable - it is perfectly possible to draw a line beyond which we, as a nation, will not go.
If you wish to start a war of competing authorities, let's bring up Hobbes, shall we? Order is a prerequisite for liberty, as evidenced by the failed democracies all across the world, and turning a blind eye to the sort of people who inflame and condone gay-bashing vigilantes (or lynch mobs, for that matter) is not acceptable in an orderly society. Rather, it restricts the liberty of the people who are vulnerable to attack because of something beyond their control, never mind threatening their lives. We occasionally compromise our liberties not out of ignorance of the gulag, but fear of the Reign of Terror.
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
Different crime. Different punishment.
Bias crimes (sometimes called 'hate crimes') do not merely victimize one individual. They are targetted at an entire community. They are effectively a form of terrorism (dictionary.com: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes) designed to disrupt the ability of a whole community to participate in society.
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Is there a reason that 'intimidation' can't cover this segment of crime, and cover it better than 'hate crime' ever could?
It's funny because you hadn't actually committed the fallacy until youu wrote that.
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You want to classify fundamentalist Christians (and presumably Muslims) who dislike and condemn homosexuality as provoking violence based on the fact that people can take their words to mean that they should ignore social norms like non-violence and attack homosexuals. Does that clarify?
But warp the entire meaning of "proven guilty", I see.
The law is applied where it's applicable. When people directly suggest violent and criminal acts that then occur, they're liable to be held to account.
Those that are always willing to compromise soon find that they have nothing left to compromise with. There must be boundaries and lines where you refuse to compromise. If we gave a government the right to control "hateful" speech in public, wouldn't private be next? We could keep compromising down this road forever, until we all have cameras in our bedrooms.
Generally, this is only possible if there's a defining characteristic of the line. If the only thing marking the line is our position relative to it, it always tends to slide. If we crossed one line to alter the rules, why not do so again? Although it's not greatly applicable in this case, I agree, since your original suggestion is still actually pretty horrible, although you refuse to see it. Maybe it's because you think those that agree with you will always be the ones making the rules about what's okay to say or not?
This is largely incoherent, and I'm not really sure how you're tying the Reign of Terror in with refusing to censor opposing viewpoints. Order is generic. Rule of law is what's actually necessary for liberty; economic and social freedoms, which are often chaotic, are also necessary. The same threat of punishment hangs over the head of all who would consider crimes against us, but beyond that we have to accept that in a free society, we may be attacked by those that would ignore consequences. There is no non-tyrannical way of solving this problem.
Your u-topia is more of a frui-topia.
But you see, this isn't the definition of a hate crime. The distinction between a hate crime and other crime is strictly one of motive: whether the act was motivated by the race/sex/orientation/whatever of the victim. The intent of the act, whether it be to intimidate or not, is irrelevant to this definition. A man could murder a black guy and, rather than use his crime to threaten and intimidate the black community (e.g. by leaving the body in a public place with a scary letter attached) do everything in his power to cover it up, and still he would be charged with a hate crime if it came up that the victim's blackness was a factor in his decision to kill.
This is why some of us oppose hate crime legislation: because it isn't a different crime, not necessarily. The only thing that has to be different about it is the conscience of the criminal, which according to the First Amendment is free and not to be criminalized. As FoolThemAll said, in the cases where a hate crime really is different than a regular crime in the manner you describe, we can call it "intimidation" or just plain "terrorism", and get the desired social effect without explicitly punishing people for their opinions.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Alright, so I'll clarify/edit for the last time, since you've got me here. If anyone advocates violence against a minority group, if a crime is actually committed, and if a clear link between the one person's speech and the other person's action can be established beyond a reasonable doubt, then the person who spoke should be punished as well as the person who acted. Thank you for knocking my inner repressive utopianism back to where it belongs.
What annoys me about this argument is that people always focus on the compromises that didn't work at the expense of those that do. We have hate speech laws right now, and they generally work on the principle of whether or not they threaten violence. If you look way protesting at abortion clinics is regulated, you see an example of a working compromise between the ability of the protesters to voice their entirely legitimate condemnation of the procedure and the desire of the doctors and patients not to have a legally permissible procedure disrupted by protesting, never mind the entirely necessary protections against death threats. If the government banned the protesters, that would unfairly restrict free speech, but if it let them scream into the windows or attack women on their way inside the clinic, that would violate the property and physical sanctity of the doctors and patients. A balance, therefore, was teased out through legal compromise.
I'm just going to point out that "the line" isn't a static thing - the American people haven't always considered free speech to mean everything we take it for today. It's not so much a slippery slope of steadily declining protections, as you seem to cast the matter, as a set of standards moving around. At the moment, many people think that one should be able to viciously attack the government and not be able to attack minority groups, but in the past, the standards worked in the opposite direction.
And yes, my initial suggestion was horrible because I didn't think it through properly, and you correctly chastised me on it. I've now compromised between my initial position in favor of something closer to what you believe and hopefully what the rest of the country wishes as well. I don't intend to be fascist, but my train of thought, like most people's, begins with "People shouldn't do this" and only later moves on to "I don't think people should do this, but the Constitution says that I, if I were a politician, could only limit it in such-and-such a way, if at all."
Upon rereading, that was a bit incoherent; I usually don't intend to be that confrontational. I suppose what I mean to say is that people who can be shown to have broken existing subornation laws should be more effectively prosecuted - to make the "threat of punishment" a little more inclined to actually fall on their heads instead of floating in the metaphorical clouds of ignorance and apathy.
That, wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too -
And angels know the rest.
Hate/non-hate is a matter of motive, not intent, and in any case is a woefully insufficient classification to make for these purposes. They have to be determined on a crime-by-crime basis.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
What's the functional difference?
Probably true.