Hate Crimes

Sully has coverage and follow up here. I'm for them for what I'll call legal 'affirmative action' reasons, meaning that the same arguments made for racial preference in college admissions: the need for dissemination of educational degrees and such throughout disfranchised populations for the good of the nation and the individual, need to be made in terms of justice. Furthermore, I believe that the extra penalties placed on hate crimes serve, not as a deterrent for racism, but rather to highlight society's decision to condemm those crimes that we tolerated before. Thus, as we have certain laws that punish sex crimes to show society's abhorrence of those crimes hate crime laws follow the same rationale. I think Sully's wrong on his Federalist stance, but he's absolutely correct that any hate crime law must include violence towards gays, both for statistical (they are the segment right now most commonly targeted in America) and moral reasons. Anyone who embraces hate crime laws but doesn't include gays in them doesn't get the point at all.