Crybaby right-wingers are throwing a shit-fit over this, claiming it as hate. This is not hate.

(from Freedom and Reason)

The media is portraying this as a hate crime, and it does in deed involve hate: Jim D. Adkisson, 58, killed two people and wounded several others at a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tennessee (right next door to where my son went to pre-school). Police found a four-page letter in his car in the church parking lot in which he ranted about gays and the "liberals movement."

However, to reduce this awful crime to a hate crime misses the ultimate cause behind it. Indeed, when we take the totality of the situation into account, we find that Jim Adkisson's life is a microcosm of what's wrong with American capitalism.

See, Adkisson was a mechanical engineer who had not been able to find work since 2006 and his food stamps had just been cancelled. He was the victim of an economic system that cannot employ everybody, a social system that does not support those who can't find work, and a legal system that is ineffective in dealing with age discrimination.

Instead of a consciousness that allowed Adkisson to understand that it is because of these systems that his is miserable, he was given an ideology that told him that the problem in the world are gays and liberals - and given the context, by liberals he understood those who are tolerant of gays and other oppressed minorities. Instead of hating the systems that screwed him, he blamed those who should be his comrades.

To be sure, Adkisson should never get out of prison. What he did is unforgivable. But that doesn't change the explanation for why this and many other crimes like it occur. American capitalism builds and loads these deadly weapons, weapons waiting for an event to pull their trigger, weapons discharged in churches, on playgrounds, and at business firms and abortion clinics.

As everyone's probably already aware, the GLBT community is now protected under hate crime legislation.  A lot of folks here on MindSay have already blogged about it.  Now it's my turn.

Bush has threatened to veto the bill.  No shocker there.  No, the shocker for those of you who read my stuff will be this:  if I were prez, I'd veto it, too.

Now, before you get in a tizzy, let me explain that I'm very much in favor of equal rights for all.  I'm as sickened by the murder of Matthew Shepard as anyone.  I even wrote an article back in 1998 (and still receive emails about it, today) about his death.

In fact, when I first wrote that article, I bemoaned the fact that Matt's murder wasn't considered a hate crime.  But then masivemaple, a dear friend of mine now for more years than I care to count, and who often has a more rational point of view than I, pointed out that the very concept of "hate crime" is... well... just wrong.

Why, after all, should killing anyone out of bigotry result in a more serious sentence than killing someone out of anger, or out of greed?  The person isn't any deader because of it.  What we're really talking about, with hate crime legislation, isn't "equal rights."  It's about extra punishment against a perpetrator because of what he/she believes!

And as heinous as I find the beliefs of anti-gay bigots... dammit, they have every right to have those beliefs.  Just as I have every right to believe they're fucking pieces of garbage for believing it.  But I do not have the right to mete out an extra helping of "justice" on them because of that.

People, this is exactly the same mentality that led to Matthew's death in the first place!  He's gay, let's kill him.  He hates gays, let's lock him up for longer.  No... I'm sorry... that makes no sense.  It's persecution, of a sort.  And that's not what we're supposed to be about, in this "land of the free."

All hate crime legislation should be abolished.  It isn't "equality."  Allowing gays the right to marry and adopt kids?  Absolutely.  That's equality.  But making it a "worse" crime to kill a homosexual (or an atheist or an Asian or a Muslim) because of who and what they are?  No.  That's inequality.

That's bigotry.

 

I have to post something about this Stanislav Shmulevich who through a Quran or two into the toilet at a college Library.

 

I understand that Shmulevich is a Jewish Ukrainian that has lived in America since childhood. Although he was not registered at the college this term he was about to graduate and I presume he had taken some time off for whatever reason.

 

Shmulevich was caught in October 06 in the act of trashing the Quran in the toilet (or Qurans, I did not read clearly on that issue), yet it was just a week or so he was arrested and charged under the equivalent of Hate Crime Statutes. I have read the by-lines that Bill O’Reilly agrees that Shmulevich should be charged for hate crimes for his actions. I mention that because I am an O’Reilly fan and usually side with Mr. Fair & Balanced.

 

This time O’Reilly and the authorities have screw-up greatly! Shmulevich on video did indeed commit a crime. The crime was at worst destruction of public (or private) property. A court of law cannot adjudicate a crime that was in the mind of an individual but only the actual act of the crime. If America were into arresting people for thoughts of hatred then Mohammedans, Leftists or even artists could be arrested.

 

I am completely dissatisfied that this can be a hate crime charge. I mean there are Mohammedan Sunnis and Shi’ites in America which act out public protests that say death to Israel, death to America, death to Jews, death to those who insult Islam and on and on and on. Where are the hate crime arrests in these instances? One does not need to have the thought police to understand the public rabble rousing of hatred in the minds of those Mohammedans.

 

YET Shmulevich trashes a Quran or two and is arrested. Incidentally Shmulevich was arrested by a Mohammedan cop that has received all kinds of awards from Mohammedan organizations with ties to foreign terrorists like Hamas. The Council on American-Islamic Relations comes to mind. CAIR members are linked to funding Hamas with money via charity and Hamas is on the State Department terrorist list.

 

Here are some interesting details from Hot Air Blog: