🚀 go-pugleaf

Most hate crimes laws involve mandating the police to keep statistics
on things which are already crimes that are committed against
certain people or in certain circumstances.  These no more involve
special rights for gays/blacks/whatever than laws against burglary
confer special rights on homeowners (after all, to commit burglary,
one must first commit trespassing; thus burglars could be simply
prosecuted under laws against trespassing).

Such laws also might mandate special punishments for offenders;
again, I see this as no more of a threat than there being punishments
for burglary which are more severe than those for trespassing.
(Although IMO there's too much emphasis on our society on punishing
people for things and too little emphasis on preventing the crime
in the first place.  But I digress.)

Laws/policies/regulations which involve speech codes are an entirely
different matter.  The less said about them (and the less of them there
are), the better.  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (uh-oh, did I just formulate
a speech code here? :-) ).

-- 
David Barts  N5JRN                      UW Civil Engineering, FX-10
davidb@ce.washington.edu                Seattle, WA  98195