Hate Crime Legislation

Many thanks to my opponent. Arbitrary PRO states that his model takes every group into account, not just “protected group”. He states “If hate towards a particular group aggravated an attack, or caused one to utter hate speech, then that should at the least be taken into consideration by the courts.” Note that he uses the word particular group, not just any group. This ambiguous wording gives the appearance that well, particular groups are protected through hate speech, and not others. He also cites the “Spanish and Swedish Penal Codes” as his model for hate speech legislation which uses: “penalty-enhancement provision for crimes motivated by bias against the victim's ideology, beliefs, religion, ethnicity, race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, illness, or disability”[1]. Obvious, this means that the groups listed above are “protected groups” while other groups are not. However, let’s state for a moment that hate crimes do not involve “protected groups”. Well, in that scenario, it would be impossible to distinguish between a hate crime and a violent or assault charge. Let me explain. As I stated earlier, one commits a crime because he or she hates a person. Second, a person can be classified into a near infinite amount of groups. People are classed into groups based on how people perceive others based on behavior, appearance, etc. Since languages contain many words, there are many words that one can find to attribute a person into a single group. One can even form a few words together to form a type of group. For example, “rock-n-roll fans” uses two words to describe a group. A person attacks another person based on certain characteristics. These characteristics can be classified into a group, and then, bam, you just arrested a person for a hate crime. Even If a person that appears to be a part of a group “through no fault of his or her own” has a choice. For example, a fat person could possibly lose weight, even through liposuction. A gay man can ignore his urge to have sexual or romantic relations with other men. In the “Spanish and Swidish Penal Codes”, religion, belief, and ideology are all protected groups, yet these are obviously choices. A person can choose his or her religion. Why should some forms of behavior, and appearance receive extra penaliy and recive extra protection and not others? Extend this analysis. Assault is a crime within itself. Hate crimes just changes the basis of what characteristic are alright to attack and which ones are not. 2) Litigation Costs CON does not address the argument, only corrects a “mistake” I made. First, jury members are told that the suspect is innocent before proven guilty, however this does not mean that jury members have a emotive bias. If the jury sees a defendant on trial and prosecuted, then he or she automatically might think the person is guilty. Second, this still does not address that expensive resources are used to prove that an assault was a hate crime or not, even though the person will already be arrested for assault. 3) . A person can be convicted for a hate crime without actually commiting a hate crime. PRO seems to have a naïve approach to the courtroom. It is quite easy for a crime that is not “hate-based” to appear to be a “hate crime”. For example, If a white man is known to hate black people, but assaults a man for reasons other than he or she was black, the white man can be put for jail. An angry person can yell a racist or ethnic slur meant to attack the person, however it comes out as hate speech or racial-motivated. As stated earlier, what constitutes a hate-crime is quite subjective, and the defendant might not even know what his or her motive for the crime was. .A well played prosecutor could easily convict a man for a hate-crime that he or she did not commit. Police interregotars are so effective they make an innocent man appear guilty[3] . Even in well-defined cases like murder cases, where prosecution is objective, the Innocence Project has found 250 innocent people in jail for murder. 4) PRO states that his analysis is sufficient proof. However, the analysis is based on no empirical evidence. His analysis only works if we assume certain assumptions. The assumption, “people will be more likely to think twice about how they phrase messages that they graffiti if it can yield higher penalties.” He believes that an increase in penalty will decrease behavior. This is not necessarily true. For example, in Portugal drugs were decriminalized, including heroin. Based on my PRO’s assumption, this should mean that more people used drugs in Portugal. Well it turns out drug use actually decreased [2]. This renders PRO’s assumption as false. There is no evidence that hate crime legislation is effective [3]. Rebuttal: 1) Multicultralism I do not state that crime legislation promotes multicultralism. At least, not true multiculturalism. I already questioned the effectiveness of hate crime legislation as stated above. However, even if hate crime laws are effective, I do not believe forced multiculturalism is true multiculturalism. As a though experiment: Let’s a group of people are yelling at one another, and generally aren’t getting along. Now, I put a gun at them, and command them to all get along. They suddenly do, not because their problems have been solved, but because of force. Does this actually believe solve the problem? No My opponent does not demonstrate that multiculturalism is vital to social happiness and democracy, just asserted without substance. PRO stated that he does not advocate controlling thoughts or freedom of expression. However, his justification for hate-crime legislation is to control people’s speech to create multiculturalism. That’s quite the contradiction. 2) Does not benefit society CON rejects the claim that hate cannot be redirected, however this is a natural contradict of basic psychology of defense mechanisms and in-group and out-group theory. In general, we have a natural tendency to create in-groups in which the in-group feels superior to the out-group. It does not matter the characteristics of the in-group, but the results are the same. Hate crime laws don't change this effect. We also have a natural tendency to scapegoat as a defense mechanism[5][6] Pro also states that natural order failed to protect Rwandian Genocide. However it should be noted that assault and murder is already a crime and that it was a government carried out project. 3) Why this isn’t a justification of limited speech PRO states that my argument is against defamation legislation, not hate speech. However since PRO’s argument states that since defamation legislation is justified so is hate speech, the fact that I negated the justification of defamation demonstrated that hate speech is also unjustified. PRO states that defamation legislation is already accepted in our society, however he even states that US does not restrict defamatory speech, ignoring a society of 300 million people in the developed world, and is making a massive Ad populous fallacy. I successfully demonstrated why defamation legislation is wrong. PRO then contradicts himself through stating: “Have we no right to speak falsifiable things?”. Not only did I never once state that “we have no right to speak falsifiable things”, he agrees that people do in fact have the right to state false things, thus demonstrating that even false statements about “protected groups” should not be banned. Conclusion: PRO has not show the effectiveness of hate crime legislation. Since assault is already a crime, it does not make to increase sentences based on arbitrary group charchteristiscs. Speech hate crimes limit the freedom of expression and try to control one’s thoughts and pursuit of happiness. I look forward to the final round. http://tinyurl.com...[1] http://tinyurl.com...[2] http://tinyurl.com...[3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] http://tinyurl.com...[5] http://tinyurl.com...[6]