That is a great idea! That way if a white or straight person hits a minority or a homosexual, that predator goes to jail and pays the ultimate price. ... You know how white people or straight people get away with too many things.

Definitely not.

Nope. Bad idea.

It depends on what is considered a hate crime. If it is like in Canada (reading the bible is a hate crime?), who needs it.

I apologize if anyone is reading this twice as I posted the same comment on a different list: I believe that all crimes are hate crimes and should be dealt with the same way. I refuse to be singled out as different or special by anyone. If you commit a criminal offense against me and one of my younger brothers, should you be punished more severely for harming me than for harming him just because I'm gay and he's not? No, I don't believe that. The sentencing phase of all trials allows for the inroduction of both motivating and mitigating factors. No special laws are needed to acheive that end.

YES! People should not be persecuted because of their race, religion, gender, sexual preference, or disability. also, we need to extend the hate crime law to people commiting hate crimes against other people because of the music they listen to for example, men who listen to country music murdering a man who listens to bubble gum and teen pop music.

Absolutely not. A crime is a crime, and a human is a human. Having harsher punishments for crimes committed against minority members would be to say that those victims' lives are more valuable than the lives of majority members who are also victims to crime. The very idea of hate crime legislation is absurd.

I can't count how many times during the 2000 campaign that Al Gore stressed the need for a national hate crimes law. During that campaign, and looking back now, I hardly ever agreed with anything that Bush advocated. However, on this subject, I was in full agreement. As he said, when you murder someone, that is hate. Whether that person is white or black, gay or straight, Christian or Muslim, it is hate. Why should penalties be tougher for someone who kills a black man than for someone who kills a white man? Why should special penalties be assessed because a man has killed a gay person? Once again, murder stems from hatred. Saying that a crime is a special sort of crime because the victim happened to be black or happened to be gay is insane. The so called need for a Hate Crimes law is merely an attempt to get the minority vote, and unfortunately, it works.