So it’s okay to let a prolonged assault happen in your restaurant as long as it doesn’t end up on the Internet?

Nice message, McDonalds.

second i propose a day when everyone wears the opposite sex clothes in protest against transgendered hate.

isaac

As someone who is “not a member of a particular demographic group” but has suffered violence repeatedly for reasons that I can only guess at (i.e. – I didn’t wear the coolest clothes, my mom didn’t own a BMW)… I think that violence against ANYONE for ANY REASON is wrong… my life is as important and precious as my gay best friends, as my other bi-sexual best friends, as the cop on the corner, as the fireman around the block. We are all children, friends, parents, lovers, aunts, uncles, etc., to people who love us and would like to have us alive and healthy for as long as possible. If you strip each and every one of us down to the basics, put everything aside that “separates” us, we are all the same. Really, when people say they are fighting for gay rights, womens rights, etc, etc, etc, they are doing nothing except creating a bigger divide. What they want is EQUAL rights. EVERYONE should have the same rights as the next person… period.

As far as the woman above, what happened to her was just plain wrong… for ANY reason. I’m so confused as I have seen different interviews saying different things so who really knows what the reason behind the attack was and does it matter? IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED. The last interview I saw she said that the one girl started the fight after saying “why you trying to talk to my man”… really??? That’s a reason to have a fight? To injure someone else??? They are just filthy low-lives who feel better about themselves when they hurt someone else for any reason.

The employees at McD’s is a whole other issue…

Beating someone up because they’re a member of some hated group – abortion providers, blacks, Jews, Muslims, queers, whoever – is really two separate crimes. There’s the crime inherent in the deed, and there’s the crime of the propaganda of the deed.

So, in addition to whatever crime is present in the physical actions against the victim, there’s also a crime of intimidation against all members of that group, because the attacker is sending a threat to other members of that group, and sending a message of encouragement to others who might contemplate such a crime.

So it would have, in effect, said that companies couldn’t discriminate in hiring, but they could discriminate by not allowing trans employees to use the bathroom. And it would have banned discrimination in housing, but permitted continued discrimination in homeless shelters, because homeless shelters are considered public accommodations.

Whatever you think of anti-discrimination law in general, carving out exceptions – such as the anti-trans amendment Jesse Helm added to the Americans with Disabilities Act – often works to legitimize the specically-permitted types of discrimination against the specifically-excluded groups.

You’re not under a legal obligation to step in and protect someone. A moral obligation? Sure. Would I have stepped in (something I’ve done before – I’ll (un)happily stand there and take a kicking to prevent someone less able to take it from being hurt further – yes. Would I have liked to see others do so? Of course. But there is no requirement to risk yourself for another person.

On one level, this is a hate crime. On another… it’s not OK when someone who looks male (even if they look particularly feminine or like a crossdresser) goes into the ladies’ room. That room is for ladies. That is why it is called that. Again, Miss Polis is a strong individual with the right to live however she wishes. I just don’t know if gender-assigned restrooms are really the place to take a step forward in gender relations.

Whether it is out of hate, love, greed, entertainment, stupidity or other motivations should not really be a concern for the law.

I’m going to guess that you’re not a member of a demographic group that routinely suffers violence.

the whole Monty Python “struggle against reality” BS is typical of the establishment view that gender is fixed and ‘normal’

No it didn’t. The police didn’t release the fact that the victim was transgender (and the reported fact that the assailant was angry she was using the women’s bathroom, when the assailant accused her of being a man) when the report first came out. Not the same thing as just not noticing; the information was not out there.

The stuff in your list doesn’t seem to be the sorts of things that happened in the OP case. So are you arguing against it as a hate crime?

Being part of the klan and burning a cross might just look like petty vandalism, but the context of it is a ‘message’ against all blacks, surely.

But some would argue that, say, when a man rapes a woman its part of the system of patriarchy sending a message to all women that society does not value them as full members of the social bond. and then all the stuff that fits into whether the rapist is a patriarchalist becomes rather muddled with things that many think are mainstream political questions, not matters of generally agreed morality.

Sure, a guy drove to a hispanic neighborhood to beat up an immigrant is going out of his way. But people mock the ‘gay panic defense’ when its a pretty plausible explanation if you’re not going to go the route of understanding the socilogical evils of the way heteronormativity enforces things in a hegemonic fashion.

“trans people freak me out when they use the ‘wrong’ bathroom” seems like a pretty good ‘irrationality’ defense against the claim that the attack motivation was group hatred that has to rely on generally protected first amendment issues and political questions factor in.

Was a person a member of a immigration restriction group? Does Republican party membership count in court as evidence of hate? Did the guy write an essay defending DOMA? Does that count as evidence of a social attack?

Will it get to the point that when unionists intimidate ‘sc*bs’ it’s classed as a hate crime?

The idea of charging minorities with hate crimes gives the story a novel twist, to the media. And it brings people out of the woodwork who don’t normally comment on this kind of thing.

Kinda sucks, eh?