Okay let me just start off before anyone jumps to any conclusions, that I am not a racist, or anti gay or anti semetic or anything like that, i just have a problem with hate crimes. My main problem is that it is very hypocritical. Civil rights groups always ask for one thing...EQUAL rights. Do you see where I am going with this? It is not equal to punish a man 2x because he is a racist or homophobic or whatever. If a murder is racially motivated, so what? He is still going to get tried for murder. An even bigger tendency is for the minority to lie about the incident. I mean how easy is it to just he beat me up because I was gay/black/mexican. I think if they are found to be lying they should be punished, just like false sexual harassment. Not only is it damaging to a persons reputation, its damaging to the cause itself!

Feel free to challenge me or add to the argument! I realize this isn't the best constructed argument, I just did kind a rough draft, so there are holes in it.