Yeah, if you yell in my face and keep doing it after I tell you to stop, you can be found guilty of harassment or disorderly conduct. Nothing serious, though, but still, don't you think you should be free from people yelling in your face?

Hate crimes give extra punishments for crimes of violence when the reason for the violence is based on racism/sexism/discrimination. In other words, you are being punished once for fighting with someone, and then again for the reason you are fighting them. It punishes you for what you think and say, not for what you do, and that's why I feel these laws are unconstitutional.

Ethnic Intimidation is similar -- if you burn a cross on someone's lawn to intimidate them to move (for instance) you can be found guilty of this, despite the fact that you are already committing all sorts of crimes by being on their property and burning a cross!

Now, do I think these facts should be taken into consideration when sentencing the criminal? Yes indeed, just like the court can take into consideration whether you are well liked in the community or a rotten troublemaker. But I don't think they should be separate crimes.

What are your views on this forum ... or well any ...we do ristrict freedom of speech itself here, whether it be profanity, locking threads or deleting them entirely if they are related to promoting an idea for sexually molesting little kids or something like that ... again, they are ideas or thoughts only, not action .... what say you?