Come on - even using your description it is absolutely thought policing - you are punishing people for why they committed a crime rather than the crime itself. That is punishing them for the thoughts they had. It's ridiculous. Dahmer didn't do any more or less damage than Ted Bundy even though he thought of his prey as dinner did he?
If punishing intent is merely punishing thought, should we do away with premeditated murder as a charge, and have all murders be prosecuted as manslaughter? Because, if you need intent/pre-thought to commit murder, then its punishing thought, right?
Murder vs manslaughter is different. I don't disagree that murder and premeditated and all the other degrees of it are stupid. But that's what happens when lawyers write laws.
IIUC, manslaughter is a homicide that just happens without any intent, but murder is a homicide that includes intent to do harm. Am I wrong lawyers? And if intent is a critical piece of a murder charge, and that has been upheld, then it follows that intent can be used as part of other criminal charges. Such as "possession with intent to distribute". Our law is filled with enhanced crimes based on intent. Why you hatn' on hate crime laws?
There is a major difference between intent to kill and accidentally killing. There is no difference between intending to kill because they were blond and reminded you of mommy or they were gay.
Not sure I see much difference in a legal fashion. If the harm was brought on (triggered) by the intent, what's the difference what the source of the intent is?
"It Depends" (<-- correct answer to every legal question) on many things, words being most important (John 1:1) is it "wrong" to be incorrect? is a Lawyer an attorney? is being "in law" the same as practicing "at law"? this is a good read on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_kill
I'm wondering what argument you think I'm making? My statement was that hate crime charges are difficult to bring, and even more difficult to prove. I said this in response to the OP which posted a link to a page that showed how rare hate crime convictions are. That then devolved into a discussion of whether or not thought was being criminalized with these laws. I pointed out that what was being criminalized was intent. The response to that was intent was the same as thought and shouldn't be criminalized. I replied with a number of examples in laws where intent is indeed criminalized, and further pointed out that there was no difference between the intent part of murder and the intent part of a hate crime. Note that nowhere have I said what I personally believe about these laws that "enhance" crimes based on who the victim is. So what is my argument as you see it?
Going back and re-reading your post, I see that we were in agreement. I was POTJ, between meetings. I wasn't trying to be obtuse, just misread your post.