From: Corwyn J. Alambar (nettiger@best.com)
Date: Fri Sep 29 2000 - 20:06:17 MDT
*SJ Merc article snipped*
>
> Reason I consider this newsworthy: students throwing rocks
> at each other is something that happens every day, but now we
> have a kid who has been arrested for assault, and was stupid
> enough to admit the reason he did it. This changes everything,
> and not just because it is an example of a thought-crime.
> Looks to me like any high school student can now stop any
> beating or attack simply by saying "Back off, Im gay."
>
> If attacked, would I play the gay card? In a heartbeat, yes.
> Of course it would work better if my wife of 16 years were
> not present, but yes, if attacked, mugged or accosted in
> any way, looks to me like the best defense is to claim
> to be gay. When I was in high school, such an admission
> would have resulted in a beating, and there was no recourse
> in those days. Now, it will not take long for every criminal to
> realize that any attack on a gay person means they will
> be lucky to get off with just life without parole. spike
*take sa deep breath* Okay - let's consider where this is going.
Question: How is this sort of an attack (singling out a student
for having, or even simply SEEMING to have, a sexual orientation
different from the attackers) any different from the lynchings of
the 1870s-1950s? In those sorts of situations, people would be
killed by assemblies of the local township, organized into a mob,
to right perceived wrongs - in one celebrated case making an ill-
advised expression of attraction for a member of a race different
from his own.
There is no way to ask this question without it being loaded, but
let's put it as bluntly as possible: When IS it okay to engage in
physical violence against another person based upon real, perceived,
or imagined differences? I'm not talking about religious tracts and
pseudo-scientific literature "proving" the inferiority of members of
one group or another - I am asking specfically about physical violence.
What is truly tragic here is not that the one boy is being held on
suspicion of assault - but that a (hypothetical) fight that took
place three days earlier didn't also result in arrests.
THe recent questions about libertarianism and such have given me an
insight (albeit still rather flawed) into the values many people here
hold. Whil eI don't always agree withthem, I admire the core goals and
values highly. Then something like this comes up, and I wonder how
reactionary and reaction-based people become over time. Whenever a
prosecution based on "hate crimes" comes up, somehow it is suddenly
an unfair application of the "morals of the state" to the private
realm, with no equal examination to what we DO permit to happen without
this pre-determined qualifying factor.
I think we can mostly all agree that violence never really solves
any sort of conflict, and allowing a direct expression of violence can
encourage further violent behavior in the future. Where you wish to
stand on this is your own choice.
AS to where I stand on it, I will say I have no problems with the end
result, though the vehicle is flawed beyond repair. As a gay man
myself, it is nice to know that some of these laws arent' as toothless
as has been threatened. But the presence of hate crimes rules bothers
me a lot as well.
I would rather that this sort of story wasn't even newsworthy, because
this is the way we treat everyone who acts with unilateral violence
towards another. Especially if we have taken away the ability of these
victims to defend themselves.
-Corey
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:31:18 MST