Thought Crimes

Since Congress is determined to pass legislation that's sure to be vetoed, they've almost completed work on this "hate crimes" bill:

A long-stalled bill that would expand the federal hate crime law to cover violent acts based on a victim's gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability is headed for approval in the Democratic-controlled Congress but faces a White House veto threat.

The House on Thursday approved the measure, the first major expansion of the hate crime statute since it was enacted in 1968. Senate approval is expected soon, putting the controversial bill on the president's desk for the first time since it was proposed nearly a decade ago.

Under intense pressure from conservative religious organizations to derail the bill, the White House on Thursday called it "unnecessary and constitutionally questionable," issuing the latest in a string of veto threats aimed at the congressional Democratic majority.

The measure was spurred by a number of high-profile incidents, including the 1998 killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was brutally beaten in Wyoming and left to die tied to a fence.

I hate "hate crimes" legislation of any kind. We should not be trying to determine what people were thinking when they committed a criminal act, but should be punishing the act regardless of motivation. There's no objective way to determine motivation.

Once you start ramping up penalties based on a subjective determination of a person's thoughts and motivation, you open the door to punish those thoughts even without an accompanying criminal action, and that's not how we do things in a country with freedom of speech.