Teen Girls Face Hate Crime Charges Over Anti-Gay Flier

Again, care to give any stats to back up your claim, because the reports I have read are not one sided

 

It would seem that only those who are hateful would be against hate crime statutes, just as a thief is against stealing being a criminal activity.

 

There is a distinction between something being wrong and something being illegal. I would desire to establish that what the two girls did was wrong, particularly if their motivation was revenge as it would appear.

As to this act being illegal and worthy of jail time, I would first desire to establish that their prior record is irrelevant to this alleged crime as some have brought into this discussion.

Now what the state attorney claims they are guilty of is "alarming and disturbing someone" and "committing a hate crime". If we are going to establish that alarming and disturbing someone is a crime, then anyone who has ever street preached or witnessed to someone about the risk of going to hell, is certainly guilty of alarming or disturbing someone or at least of attempting to alarm or disturb someone.

If one is guilty of a hate crime because they post a picture of someone in the process of a sodomite act, well this would seem like a paradox. Either the act is acceptable or it is abominable. If it is acceptable then the picture shouldn't offend anyone, if it is abominable perhaps the individuals in the picture should be arrested? Illinois was the first state to get rid of their laws against sodomy. If it isn't a crime any more then the state finds it acceptable. If the state finds it acceptable then their shouldn't be a problem with a picture of someone in the act right?

Thus, we are down to the wording that was on the fliers, which unconfirmed reports say the fliers said "God hates fags". Now I don't think it is right for someone to say this, as it lacks accuracy and seems to be mean just to be mean. However, I will defend anyone's right to say anything they so desire in a Constitutional Republic with a Bill of Rights that says...

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" - 1st Amendment U.S. Constitution​

Is the argument then that congress shall make no law infringing the freedom of speech but the states can?

 

The argument is that these girls targeted a specific person and set upon a premeditated and concerted effort to slander this person and destroy his reputation.

What these girls thought is not at issue.

Please read the above line again, carefully.

What they did is at issue. DID, not "thought."


They can think that God hates human beings who engage in homosexual activity. They would be wrong, of course, because it is the action and not the person which God would hate (and we all know where I fall in that discussion in any case). But they are absolutely free to think that.

They are even free to act upon those thoughts, picketing and protesting and writing letters to their congresspersons.

They are NOT free to use these beliefs to attack, personally and eggregiously, one individual with whom they have an argument.

The simplicity of the concept, and some posters' willful ignorance over it, befuddles even me.

I mean, honestly. This has as much to do with African Americans raping a white girl (racism much, Hope of Glory?) as the Economic Price Index has to do with sunspots.

 

Hmmmm. Let me ask you this...If one was to get on a message board and call someone "mental" because of their association to a group that shares a set of common beliefs, would this be an effort to slander this person and destroy his reputation? Would it be a crime?

I suppose that would depend on whether or not God considers sodomy to be wicked...

"The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity." - Psalm 5:5​

I agree with you when you say "They are not free", if you believe they can only say certain things.

It is quite related.

 

No.

If I were to follow that specific person from thread to thread, posting lies and disrupting the flow of the thread, it still wouldn't be a crime, but it would be a bannable offense.

And is completely outside of the subject of this thread.
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You misunderstand me. They are free to say things in general, just as Phelps and his ilk are.

When these general statements become specific attacks aimed not at sharing information but at damaging another individual, they have crossed the line from opinion to assault. It really is that simple, Rufus, and you are more than smart enough to know this.

Enlighten me.

 

These two girls are not accused of stalking him. The only difference in the two scenarios is the medium used.

You made the statement that the girls thinking that God hates human beings who engage in homosexual activity were wrong. If homosexual activity is condoned of God then you would be right. However, if God finds homosexual activity to be wicked ie iniquitous, and the Holy Bible says God hates the workers of iniquity, the two girls would be correct and this doctrine of "God hates the sin not the sinner" could be in error.

They have freedom of general speech but not freedom of specific speech?

Let's test this...Is this what you are saying?

General Statement (Legal)

"God hates fags."
​

Specific Statement (Illegal)

"God hates Freddie Mercury, a fag."​

It is applicable as it shows the comparative issue of one party of an unprotected group offending parties of a protected group, being denied bail (bail should only be denied if the accused is a flight risk or a threat to society) and being charged with a felony! because of something she wrote or said. On the other issue, members of a protected group killed (and more) parties of an unprotected group and are not being charged with a hate crime (though murder wouldn't seem to be very loving) and are being granted bail.

You could further connect this to a very curious level of media attention, who will turn a rape accusation from a protected individual against unprotected persons into a national scandal, in which the rape accusation was a lie (Duke Lacrosse). However, the rape and murder of protected individuals against unprotected individuals in which the victims are actually dead, gets little to no attention (Channon Christian, Christopher Newsom). Connect the dots on all of these issues and you will find that "hate crimes"' are "hateful" towards the unprotected groups.

 

Good job, Rufus.

 

So, do you have some inside information that they made up the information and/or photoshopped the picture on the flier?

If I go out and run down the street naked, then someone has every right to put up fliers (or even publish in the newspaper) a photo (brobably blacked out) and the caption that "God hates streaker!"

Now, if they were to photoshop my head onto someone else's body and do the same thing, it would be illegal.

So, if the person did the suggested acts, what they did should be perfectly acceptable (legally), even if detestable. What he did was certainly detestable.

Oh, one more example: Matthew Shepard & Jesse Dirkhising. In one case, they murdered a kid for his money, but they used the fact that he was a homosexual to lure him there. In the other, the 13 year old child was brutalized and murdered simply because he was heterosexual. Guess which one got the publicity? Do a Google (1,220,000 for Shepard, 14,100 for Dirkhising). Now, if memory serves, there were no so-called hate crime laws on the books when Shepard was murdered, but his murder prompted them to be enacted. No one claimed that the latter was a hate crime, many went on to explain just why it was not.

So, Shepard killed for cash, but was a homo equals a hate crime.
Dirkhising raped and killed because he was not a homo somehow does not equal a hate crime.

 

The difference is that the singled out someone to persecute them.

In which case we ae living in preChristian times, and what's the point of any of this?

Not quite.

Freddy Mercury is a celebrity, albeit a dead one. One could argue that a person is using Mercury as an archetype and not a single person.

In this case, these girls were abusing the reputation of a private citizen.
​

 

Would this be before or after you were arrested for public exposure?

Streaking, like flashing, is illegal. Homosexuality is not.

Public exposure is also a crime of a sexual nature. Thus after being convicted, you would be classified as a sex offender and put on a national database. Posters with your face on it would be expected.

Again, homosexuality is not a crime.

"Homo?"

Nice. Very seventh-grade.

And it's a straw-man argument. Even without hate crimes legislation, the kinds of personal attack and character assassination demonstrated in the OP are illegal.

 

You do not believe that you are persecuting Christians when you accuse specific individuals of being mental for being fundamentalists?

I was only responding to an issue you brought up.

I used Freddie Mercury as it was someone I figured we would both agree was a reprobate.

Which is well within her rights in a free country. "My neighbor Bob is a lazy sloth because he doesn't tell his dogs to be quiet." Is this hate speech?

Well thank you brother. I am grieving over the two individuals of the unprotected group who were slaughtered by the 4 individuals of the protected group and who do not get the same justice or attention, as they would if they were part of the protected group.

 

It used to be, before people like yourself got the laws changed.

Sodomy is a crime against God's laws and is a crime against nature.

That's short for homosexual, you know, similar to calling someone a "fundy".

They took a picture of two boys/men/? kissing each other and allegedly stated on the flier that "God hates fags". What non-hate crime law would that violate?

 

I thought you were a strong advocate of the 1st Amendment. I see I was wrong.

Calling people names and insulting them is still not against the law.

Overzealous advocates of political correctness can turn just about any insult into some sort of "hate crime".

Ridiculous.

 

BTW, public nudity is not illegal everywhere. There is a place in VT that this is an issue right now because it's not illegal. Around here, I don't know if it's illegal or not, but you probably won't see it. Lots of skeeters, bears, etc.

However, I would say that public exhibitionism is morally reprehensible and homosexuality is an abomination. Both are wrong.

If the guy was kissing another guy in public, there certainly isn't any slander involved.

 

Ouch, my character hurts.

Sorry. I couldn't resist.:laugh:

For the record, I went through school being teased and picked on because of my weight, for one, and also for my strong Christian beliefs. I was called awful names and even physically abused.

In all those "hate crimes", it never once occurred to me to go any higher than the Principals or my parents.

Teenagers are, for the most part, idiots. Why on earth anyone would think this warrants police involvement, and especially criminal charges, is beyond me.

These girls should have been given detention, or expulsion at the most, and maybe a letter sent home to parents about the incident. Making the girls perform some embarrassing task, such as cleaning the bathrooms, would also have been good. What they did was horrible, but does not warrant intervention by the legal system.

Why are parents so willing to get "the system" involved nowadays?

Maybe re-introducing corporal punishment at schools would be a good move. Those girsl deserve a good spanking, not jail-time.

All hate crimes laws are stupid. If a real crime had been committed, it would have been covered by some other law.

We had the case Jasper, Texas just before the 2000 presidential elections about James Byrd, Jr., a black man, being chained around the neck and drug to death behind the back of a car by 2 neo-nazis. They were tried and convicted. Al Gore used this to attack GW Bush for not enacting hate crimes legislation. As Bush pointed out, one of the men received life in prison and the other received the death penalty. How would charging a hate crime have increased the punishment???

All hate crimes legislation does is pander to certain groups in society to make them feel good and vote for the person/party that enacted it. It's a political ploy, nothing more, and is now being used to find crimes where once there were none. It's ludicrous.

 

Slander, libel, defamation of character, assault.

 

Assault would be a ridiculous charge in this case..

If the agrieved party believes they were slandered, libeled of defamed, they can seek redress in the civil court system.

Their is no way this episode belongs in a criminal court.