I guess they think they were displaying their manhood by stomping on an older gentleman whom they out number and by hitting while he was helpless.

"They were good kids."

This must be another example of Liberal fear mongering right?

hate crime legislation is stupid and shouldn't be the reason that these assholes rot in jail.

Agreed.

equal protection of the law.

You know, this opinion is near consensus on the internetz, and I used to find it somewhat compelling, but when you think about it we've got all sorts of crimes for "special" situations. Why is there a special law against hitting your spouse, for example, why isn't that the same as hitting some jerk in a bar?

So, hate crime rules are not dumb. They are awesome. And if it leads to a 200-year prison sentence for these assholes I say bravo.

And if it leads to a 200-year prison sentence for these assholes I say bravo.

"If the victim were a heterosexual male, they would likely end up with a much lesser sentence. So how are hate crimes fair, exactly?"

Well, why did the hypothetical criminals beat up the hypothetical straight male? No reason? They just saw him walking down the street and attacked him?

The idea of a hate crime is that the victim is selected because of their identity. Not only does it victimize that one person, but it is a form of domestic terrorism against everyone like that person. The victim literally could have been anybody in that category. This is why it is its own category of crime.

And who gets to parse the facts to determine if someone is gay or effeminate? If she's a lesbian or just a little tough looking? You can't base legality on something that open to interpretation. I can assure you that if my gay cousin and I were walking down the street and we both got our asses kicked, he wouldn't want crimes against me to be viewed as lesser than crimes against him.

And what's to stop someone from pretending to be gay so that the punishment doled out is worse? - Terrible system to base things on.

"And who gets to parse the facts to determine if someone is gay or effeminate? If she's a lesbian or just a little tough looking?"

You are missing the point that the MOTIVATION matters, not whether the victim is actually gay or not. Somebody above pointed that out to you already.

"You can't base legality on something that open to interpretation."

They have these people called judges and juries who get to interpret how laws apply.

This poor man was nearly beaten to death. Sometimes people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and they get assaulted or killed in a 'random' act of violence. In this instance, they brutalized a gay man after yelling faggot at him. They absolutely should be charged with commiting a hate crime. I hope the judge gives them both a nice long vacation. The longest possible. I also hope they they get beaten and raped repeatedly in prison. I have no compassion for people like this and I honestly wish them the worst.

So you agree with the side that claims you can tell someone is gay just by looking at them? And if so, isn't that a form of profiling?

Of course, there's no way to know with certainty the sexual orientation of a stranger. Sometimes you can just kind of tell if someone is gay though, no? Have you never met or seen anyone and formed a 'he's probably gay' or even an 'OMG he's SUPER GAY' opinion in your head?

Besides, if I beat someone nearly to death after calling him a Chinese piece of shit, but we later find out the victim is actually Korean, does that make what I did any better or worse?

Well said.

Yes some special situations warrant special consideration, but thought crimes are very different. Not to be too cliche, but this is the best example of the slippery slope.

"Yes some special situations warrant special consideration, but thought crimes are very different."

Bzzzt. It's not about policing "thought", it's about the motivation for the illegal action. You can think anything you want. But, once you commit a crime, why you did it matters.

Again, the law makes all sorts of other distinctions based on forethought and motivation (see: manslaughter vs. murder). Sure, they are difficult distinctions to make and it's agonizing to listen to all the back and forth, but that's why we have courts and lawyers.

Motive is used to prove guilt. Guilty of committing a crime; the 'why' does not increase or decrease the severity of the 'crime'. Motivation plays into determining a verdict once guilt is established.

@snickerdoodle has it correct; remember we are all equal under the law, and the disparity in the application of hate crime designations weighs heavily against justice being served for citizens that don't find themselves among a select class.

"the 'why' does not increase or decrease the severity of the 'crime'"

Of course it can and does. Killing somebody because you intended to and planned it all out, vs. killing somebody in a "fit of passion", vs. killing somebody because you are negligent, vs. killing somebody in self-defense vs. killing someone because you are insane and believe they are a space alien are all different crimes (and the latter two aren't even crimes I guess.) In all these situations WHY you did it matters, and they look at the facts of the situation to determine that why.

In the case of "hate crimes" they look at how you act when you are doing it, what you told your friends before or after, and what you said in the interrogation room. You defend yourself by offering a different scenario of why you did it, like "I wanted to rob him." It's not simply based on the status of the victim, as many people assume. Nor is it easy to convict, from what I've seen in the news.

But, I'm done for today. I'm happy that my stance hasn't yet produced the shower of indignant responses I anticipated. My main message is people of the internet, think again about hate crimes. It's not as dumb as you assume it is.

But these weren't just thougts, they were yelling faggot at him. The reasons behind crimes are always taken into consideration during sentencing. Someone who almost beats another person to death for no other reason than the color of their skin or sexual orientation is a particularly heinous individual and deserves to be punished more harshly.

Good. Hope these assholes get the max, no possibility of parole.