I don’t think my parter and I marrying is forcing you to do anything. I do think that imposing your “Christian” values on us by denying us the right to marry is a whole different story.
Exactly my point - what was once a common culture has exploded into polarized opposites on just about every issue - we are not a melting pot anymore - we are a time bomb
About this so-called “common culture”…you do realize the founding fathers weren’t Christian right? The country was taken over by Christianity for a time, but it didn’t start out that way.
Freedom of speech means having the ability to develop and express your own opinions on social issues. Far from bemoaning the resulting diversity, I think we should celebrate it.
[quote]forlife wrote:
Why stop there? Why not have the death penalty for jaywalking?
To be just, the punishment has to be commensurate with the crime. I don’t think anyone is advocating the death penalty for violence (as opposed to murder), regardless of whether or not the victim belongs to a high risk group.[/quote]
You missed my point. My point was, most people who are against the death penalty don’t care if it reduces crime. To them, killing a human being in cold blood is wrong. Period. I’m making an analogy. I think it is wrong, period, to punish a person’s thoughts.
[quote]
The first amendment doesn’t protect free speech to the point of violence against someone else. Free speech is protected only to the point that your fist meets someone else’s face.[/quote]
I agree. But it still protects the thoughts that motivated you to punch that someone. Thinking “I
m gonna punch that nigger in the face,” is not eh same as punching him in the face, EVEN when they BOTH occur.
[quote]
Exactly. Most of us disagree with him, but the Patriot Act was clearly informed by the values Bush had as President at the time.[/quote]
Well yes and no. Yes it was informed by bush’s values. No that does not mean it didn’t horribly violate our natural rights. Ignoring the Bill of Rights isn’t just ignoring our legal system, it is ignoring the BASE human rights that we are ALL born with.
[quote]
The thoughts produced the action due to their extreme nature. Hatred is protected by freedom of speech to the extent that it is controlled, but when the hatred becomes so virulent that it spills into action, it crosses the line and is no longer protected by the first amendment. It’s a question of degree. Freedom of speech has limits, just as any other freedom does.[/quote]
Again, I have no problems with you punishing an action. None at all. You’re treating thoughts and actions as if they were one, I find that to be a bit silly. Thoughts are not actions, actions are not thoughts. Hateful actions deserve punishment, hateful thoughts do not.
[quote]
Of course you can. Every law has scope. If it didn’t, it would apply universally regardless of the act, the situation, the perpetrator, or the victim, and would be meaningless.[/quote]
You’ve misinterpreted my question, or I haven’t articulated it clearly. I didn’t mean to say laws don’t have scope. I do mean to say, why would narrowing that scope protect the people it now covers any more than broadening the scope so that a greater number of people are covered. If a law covers group A, but not B and C, why would A get more protection than if the law covered A, B and C?
[quote]
Because it draws attention to that particular target, increasing awareness of the act and the negative consequences of committing the act.[/quote]
But there are many other ways to draw attention to the act. Also, the act isn’t nearly as common as other similar acts. If hate crimes occurred more than normal crimes, you might have a point. But racially (or other prejudicially motivated) crimes are but a fraction of the overall crimes in the US. A black man is much more likely to be assaulted for a non-purely-racist reason than for a purely racist one.
[quote]
I’m not the one passing hate crimes legislation. I’m simply pointing out that IF hate crime legislation effectively reduces hate crimes, there is a valid reason for it to exist.[/quote]
In other words, you think the end justifies the means. I do not. I think the means are Unconstitutional and violate the natural rights of human beings. I’d go as far as to say I don’t think these things or believe them, I KNOW them to be true. The natural rights of human beings include the ability to think horrible, hateful thoughts. If they act on those thoughts, YES, they deserve punishment. But never, EVER for the thoughts themselves, and THAT is what hate crime legislation seeks to do.
The difference between us is that you are treating a hate crime as one act, where I am seeing it as two. You must separate the physical action from the motivation. They are NOT part of the same overall action.
Let’s take the discussion in a new direction shall we? What are other ways, besides hate crime legislation, that we can reduce hate crimes (or what amount to hate crimes)?
In the case of gay-beatings, how about asking local Churches to speak out against such violence? Maybe start a campaign asking the Pope or some other Church authority to issue a statement condemning such terrible violence, often motivated by Biblical beliefs?
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Exactly my point - what was once a common culture has exploded into polarized opposites on just about every issue - we are not a melting pot anymore - we are a time bomb[/quote]
Ridiculous. While our culture is taking a few bad turns (valuing quantity over quality, valuing things over experiences, the “keeping up with the Joneses” phenomenon), we have overall moved in a better, more tolerant direction.
Tolerance doesn’t mean having to like or even approve of the things people do. If those things do not violate anyone else’s rights, it is just to tolerate their existence.
America has never had a single culture. Even when we were a “Christian” nation we had MANY sections of Christianity thriving here, all with different values and world views. Puritan’s were quite different than Quakers who were quite different than Catholics who were quite different than Mormons etc…
Your call to march backwards in time is both meaningless and misguided.