#76
Posted: 10/1/10 at 11:15am
It seems very clear to me that Ravi was ridiculing the fact that his roommate was having gay sex. Those kinds of attempts to humiliate someone's perceived lack of "masculinity" are common: bullying someone as a "fag" or a "faggot" even when the homosexuality is wrongly assumed.
A tide has now turned, and that kind of bullying will from now on be exposed as such, and the perpetrators will be charged, prosecuted, convicted and punished to the full extent of the law, until every high-school-age male learns that demeaning someone's masculinity with verbal and physical taunts is not just boys-being-boys, it is NOT cool, and it is a crime with major consequences, as bad or worse for the bully as it was for the bullied.
That said, as a longtime defender of hate-crimes statutes I have to say that a hate-crime is a distinction of motive and must always be defined as a crime against someone committed simply because that person is a member of a group against which the perpetrator has an expressed animus.
Thus, it would be a hate crime if I were murdered by a BWW board member who says "I hate Gay Jewish Liberals" and who goes out looking for Gay Jewish Liberals and runs into me and kills me while saying, "Take that, you Gay Jewish Liberal! I hope all you Gay Jewish Liberals die!" That would be a hate crime. It could have been any Gay Jewish Liberal--I just happened to be the Gay Jewish Liberal he ran into.
But if Reginald Tresilian finally gets so annoyed at me that he shoots me, point blank, six times, until the gun is empty, crying, "Take that, you silly, silly queen! I hate you. Oh, GOD, how I hate you! I have hated you for yeaaaaaaaars!"
No, no matter how many times he said he hated me, that would NOT a hate crime.
A tide has now turned, and that kind of bullying will from now on be exposed as such, and the perpetrators will be charged, prosecuted, convicted and punished to the full extent of the law, until every high-school-age male learns that demeaning someone's masculinity with verbal and physical taunts is not just boys-being-boys, it is NOT cool, and it is a crime with major consequences, as bad or worse for the bully as it was for the bullied.
That said, as a longtime defender of hate-crimes statutes I have to say that a hate-crime is a distinction of motive and must always be defined as a crime against someone committed simply because that person is a member of a group against which the perpetrator has an expressed animus.
Thus, it would be a hate crime if I were murdered by a BWW board member who says "I hate Gay Jewish Liberals" and who goes out looking for Gay Jewish Liberals and runs into me and kills me while saying, "Take that, you Gay Jewish Liberal! I hope all you Gay Jewish Liberals die!" That would be a hate crime. It could have been any Gay Jewish Liberal--I just happened to be the Gay Jewish Liberal he ran into.
But if Reginald Tresilian finally gets so annoyed at me that he shoots me, point blank, six times, until the gun is empty, crying, "Take that, you silly, silly queen! I hate you. Oh, GOD, how I hate you! I have hated you for yeaaaaaaaars!"
No, no matter how many times he said he hated me, that would NOT a hate crime.