I am not particularly against the labeling of certain crimes as "hate crimes," or in other ways distinguishing crimes that are committed due to ethnic, religious, sexual orientational, etc. prejudice.
What I am against is the creation of "hate crimes" as a legal category that are treated differently from other crimes.
There is nothing wrong with a group specifically dedicating itself to preventing/stopping/obtaining justice for crimes that are a group prejudice. What I disagree with is the idea that we ought to punish crimes differently based on who the victim was, and based on aspects of the motivation for the crime that do not bear on how intentional the crime was or was it justified.
Put another way, I have no problem with punishing someone harder for pre-meditated crimes than for crimes committed in the throes of passion, or for distinguishing justifiabe homicide form unjustifiable. Also, to the extent that someone's prejudices may impact on the likelihood that the crime was justified is entirely appropriate. For example, if someone who is known to be an advocate for sending all blacks "back" to Africa and who constantly calls them "scum" shoots a black man and claims self-defense, his opinions of blacks certainly would be relevant to calling his credibility into question. As another example, if he claimed it was a "crime of passion," his previous statements would certainly be relevant [although not by themselves conclusive] to determining whether or not he premeditated the killing.
But I see no reason to treat the murder of a gay man by two men who decided to "get him" any differently than, for example, the murder of a shopkeeper by a robber who decided not to leave any witnesses.
(Actually, I can see several reasons, but they are all bad ones).
That is all.
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