From: quilty@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Humberto Humbertoldi)
Subject: "Gay-Bashing" 
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 07:30:13 GMT

In article <Bxv7wx.Dx5@acsu.buffalo.edu> pfohl@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Anne Pfohl) writes:
>In article <1992Nov12.193724.22309@tc.cornell.edu>, 
>	shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes...

>..and since, in fact, CO #2 *does* legalize discrimination, how 
>would one go about prosecuting an incident of gay bashing in 
>Colorado now?  Would it have to be tried as assault, with no 
>reference to it being a hate crime, or motivated by hatred of 
>gays?
>
>If that's the case, gay bashing wouldn't exist in Colorado, 
>because the crimes could not be identified as such in order to be 
>prosecuted.

There seems to be a tricky issue here, which I would like to bring up.
It's a different thread, I know, but it's also a different subject
line:  
	I really don't think there SHOULD be specific laws against
"gay-bashing," nor any of the other "hate-crimes" type laws which are
popping up relative to other categories victims (race, sex, religion,
etc.).  To me, laws against "hate-crimes" only serve to try someone on
the basis of their ideological beliefs, rather than on their criminal
behavior.  This seems like a fundemental abridgement of rights to free
expression of belief, or even to simply BELIEVE a belief.  As
abhorrent as it is for someone to HATE someone on the basis of their
sexuality, race, sex, or whatever -- I for one most certainly do not
want THE STATE stepping in to regulate and illegalize such BELIEF.
	Now, of course, if someone acts on a hateful belief, and goes
and beats up on gays qua gays (for example), they should most
certainly be tried on assault and other related charges.  But to
charge them based, not on the character of their actions, but on its
motivation, seems like a dangerous infringement of freedom of thought.
This also does not mean -- as the previous poster suggests -- that
*statistics* could not then be kept of "hate-crimes".  Police report
many things about crimes committed besides the charges ultimately
brought.  For example, national figures are kept (based on local
police reports) of numbers of assaults by family members versus
strangers.  This does not imply that there is a separate criminal
statute for "assault by family member" and "assault by stranger" --
it's just something filed in police blotters and nationally collected.
Such similar figures would still be relavant to "hate-crimes" even in
the absence of differentiating statutes.
	All of this is very different from laws against
DISCRIMINATION.  Discrimination is always, by definition, an act which
is carried out.  On the other hand, I don't think that mere
discriminatory intent should be litigable if it's not carried through
in action.  It's a little difficult here to consider the opposite
case, however:  I don't really know how one can "discriminate" without
discriminatory intent (at least unconscious intent).  I suppose
discriminatory effect should probably be litigable even where intent
can not be shown (despite a series of recent right-wing supreme court
decisions to the contrary), but even here it's hard to make a close
analogy with the "hate-crimes" issue since we're talking about civil
rather than criminal action.  That is, if someone discriminates, and
then it is shown that they ALSO had discriminatory intent, there is --
and SHOULD BE -- no additional liability for damages (one is
already responsible for lost wages, loss of property, etc, either
way).  The analogy with "hate-crimes" I mean to be drawing is just
that, where "hate-crime" laws exist, if one is found guilty of
assault, then later shown to have a "hateful-intent" behind the
assault, one IS LIABLE for additional criminal penalties! Talk about
"double jepardy!"
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