So many people were outraged about the young gay man who was harassed and had gay slurs carved into his arm.

"This story needs to be picked up by national media. Investigative reporters might do more good here than the police are doing."

"The cops have to know who did this horrible act. A person does not just jump to cutting words into a person's skin. Most likely him/they are the sons of the SP or Bishops, etc."

"Time to call in the Feds to provide some law and order for that backwards, piece of shit town."

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1603472,1604201#msg-1604201

Well, you can relax. He faked it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/01/utah-anti-gay-attack-staged-_n_7705952.html?utm_hp_ref=crime&ir=Crime

I'm sure the young man will get plenty of sympathy and compassion. The article quotes his lawyer, who is already spinning this into "he's still the victim."

But how about an apology to the local police, the innocent townspeople, the taxpayers who funded the police investigation???

Every time I see reports of "hate crimes" I am skeptical. I think true crimes, like the Charleston shooting, are much rarer than attention-seeking people making them up.

I think this is an unusual case. The young man appears to have mental health issues. It happens.

I disagree with you on the prevalence of hate crimes. I think that they are probably more common than we realize. The recent spate of burnings of African American churches in the South flew under the news radar for quite some time. And it appears that not all of them are accidental.

There is a reason that these reports are viewed cautiously by the authorities.

The Sun also neglected to mention that the manufactured media coverage that launched the 1990s black-church-arson juggernaut, fueled by former USA Today reporter Gary Fields’s 61 fear-mongering stories, fell apart under scrutiny. Fields’s own employer was forced to admit that “analysis of the 64 fires since 1995 shows only four can be conclusively shown to be racially motivated.” Reminder: Several of the hyped hate crimes against black churches had been committed by black suspects; a significant number of the black churches were, in fact, white churches; and the complex motives behind the crimes included mental illness, vandalism, and concealment of theft.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420572/black-church-burnings-another-hoax-epidemic

So, in the previous wave of black church burnings, about 6% were racially motivated.

Faked hate crime reporting is so prevalent, that there are entire websites devoted to tracking them.

Oh, for crying out loud, there are entire web sites devoted to debunking the Apollo moon landings. That proves nothing except that there is a market for whatever POV they are selling.

So, are all hate crimes faked, or just those against blacks? How about sexual harassment claims? Rape accusations? Was 9/11 faked? That was a hate crime. Did SLC mayoral candidate Jackie Biskupski paint pink swastikas on her own campaign posters last Monday?

Sounds like you really want to believe hate crimes are vastly overblown. That's a perfect set up for confirmation bias. Some percentage of all crime reports are faked or otherwise in error. So when you find one, and you always will if you look long enough, there's an immediate "see, I told you."

A certain number of fires are set by firemen. That doesn't mean most fires are arson, or that they are mostly set by firemen. And a certain number of hate crimes, that is, crimes designed to terrorize a group of people (lynching being a prime example from our past), are faked. That doesn't mean they don't happen.

Charleston murders: hate crime.

You think it sounds as if I want to believe they're all faked, and I think it sounds as though you want to believe the world is a dangerous place where hoards of roaming straight white men are out to make everyone a victim at the drop of a hat.

Funny, huh?

Snark aside, I do believe there are real hate crimes. I pointed out the Charleston murders as a prime example.

But I also believe that there are more than enough fake ones to justify initial skepticism. Faked hate crimes are not rare.

It's like when during a murder investigation, the first people the cops look at are family members and close friends. It's not that "stranger murders" never happen, it's that they don't happen nearly as frequently as "close to home" murders.

Highly stylized 'hate crimes' are often faked. A lot of crimes in which slurs are cut into the person's body, for example, are eventually proven fake; likewise with physical damage that includes slurs.

The reason being, of course, is that most people with criminal propensity anymore don't do it out of some sense of racial justice; the racism/sexism is merely a sideshow. So a group of white men may target a black for a crime, but the point is still the crime itself, not to get the slur across.

Resultingly, crimes in which somebody can get cut on (usually requiring unconsciousness) but have no traumatic injuries are almost universally faked, and there are a depressingly large number of them.

In other words:
If a black guy gets mugged and says that a bunch of white boys did it *and* he has injuries commensurate with it, I'm likely to believe it's a bona fide hate crime.

If a black guy gets "N******" carved into him but has no head injuries, defensive wounds, or varying depths in the cut, it's likely it was faked.

And for a few more examples of fakes like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2637914/Man-accused-writing-N-receipt-given-black-Red-Lobster-waitress-sues-restaurant-waitress-handwriting-experts-finds-DIDNT-write-racial-slur.html

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/03/04/hercules-transgender-teen-admits-making-up-story-of-sex-assault-in-bathroom/

http://theothermccain.com/2013/12/28/another-fake-hate-crime-arrest-discredits-tennessee-anti-gay-case/

It's not as though there are groups of white (or black, or straight, or whatever else) men that sit at their desks all day, counting down the hours until they can beat on a (insert your choice here -- black, female, gay) person and carve slurs into his/her body, then return to their posh homes in the suburbs. The core element of most genuine hate crimes remains criminal intent (ie, robbery, burglary, etc.)-- and if a story is lacking in criminal plausibility, it's almost certain to be fake.

A lot of what you said makes sense. This was interesting:

"If a black guy gets mugged and says that a bunch of white boys did it *and* he has injuries commensurate with it, I'm likely to believe it's a bona fide hate crime."

Would you also consider this a hate crime if the racial identity of mugger and victim were reversed?

Because FBI crime statistics would indicate that the "reverse" scenario is far, far more likely to occur. Of course, it's not generally labeled "hate crime" because the intent is not racial very often. It's greed.

You ask a good question. Per the UCR the FBI releases, it's far more likely on a per-capita basis for a white guy to be victimized by blacks than vice versa. But this is where the 'hate crime' definition gets sticky (and why I personally oppose protected-classes legislation) -- did the guy get victimized because of his race, or because he was seen as an easy mark?

I generally don't like hate crime legislation; I think that society is equally poorer off when a victim gets mugged because he's gay as it is when a victim gets mugged because his mugger is a greedy SOB. By making some types of victimization morally superior, we create crimes that are 'second-class' in nature.

Moreover, from a policing standpoint, hate crimes legislation tends to make the special class advocates feel good without actually making a meaningful difference. I'm all about crime reduction, but hate crimes classification is a bad way to accomplish it. It creates media circuses and it disenfranchises more 'normal' victims.

I don't agree with you that creating a hate crime improperly "classifies" criminal behavior and makes some victims "second-class." All crimes create classes, there's nothing new there. And victims are not classed at all as first or second, they are victims of some particular definition of crime.

A hate crime is just that. A crime perpetrated on a member of a group for a terroristic purpose beyond the crime itself. SC is the example. Members of a hated group are murdered by a white supremist because they are members of the hated group and for the purpose fomenting some kind of universal persecution of the hated group. The fact that such crimes are more rare than other crimes means nothing. Hate crimes are a particular catagory of crime. The mindset that would cause a person to become so violently caught-up in an abstraction that they would violently lash out because the hated people refuse to conform, is very dangerous, and it's appropriate to punish as a particular crime, criminal behavior that results.

"If a black guy gets "N******" carved into him but has no head injuries, defensive wounds, or varying depths in the cut, it's likely it was faked."

This is reminiscent of the Tawana Brawley case:

"On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, who had been missing for four days from her home in Wappingers Falls, New York, was found seemingly unconscious and unresponsive, lying in a garbage bag several feet from an apartment where she had once lived. Her clothing was torn and burned, her body smeared with feces. She was taken to the emergency room, where the words "KKK", "n****r", and "b*tch" were discovered written on her torso with a black substance described as charcoal."

"Brawley's claims in the case captured headlines across the country. Public rallies were held denouncing the incident. Racial tension climbed. When civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, with attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, began handling Brawley's publicity, the case quickly took on an explosive edge. At the height of the controversy in June 1988, a poll showed a gap of 34 percentage points between blacks (51%) and whites (85%) on the question of whether she was lying.[11]

"Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason generated a national media sensation. The three claimed officials all the way up to the state government were trying to cover up defendants in the case because they were white. Specifically, they named Steven Pagones, an Assistant District Attorney in Dutchess County, as one of the rapists, and called him a racist, among other accusations.

"The mainstream media's coverage drew heated criticism from the African-American press and leaders for its treatment of the teenager.

"Under the authority of New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams, a grand jury was called to hear evidence. On October 6, 1988, the grand jury released its 170-page report concluding Brawley had not been abducted, assaulted, raped and sodomized, as had been claimed by Brawley and her advisers. The report further concluded that the "unsworn public allegations against Dutchess County Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones" were false and had no basis in fact."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawana_Brawley_rape_allegations

A more recent case is that of the accusers of the Duke U. lacrosse team, which was also determined to be completely false. And the recent allegations of hate crimes made by the now-discredited Rachel Dolezal appear to be wholly concocted as well. The worst thing about inventing stories of hate crimes like these is that it makes the public more suspicious of incidents which might be legit. And of course, the fact that so many of these high-profile stories turn out to be false makes one wonder if actual "hate crimes" are a lot more rare than people with an agenda want the public to believe they are.

This case involved a lesbian couple in 2010 who alleged that someone had spray-painted the word "q*eers" on their house, and later burned it down.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/local-news/lesbian-couple-faced-hostility

The couple received lots of support from the community:

"Since the couple went public, there's been a groundswell of support for them, Carol Ann Stutte said Monday.

"Efforts include a special fund set up at the church.

"The Maryville chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays is accepting contributions of clothing, toiletries and dog food for the couple's three dogs. (For a list of the items the family needs most, visit www.pflagmaryville.org.)

"Ben Byers, the head of the Tennessee Equality Project's Knoxville committee, said various groups have raised close to $2,800, and there are plans for a benefit concert in the area."

But the homeowner's insurance company's investigation found lots of holes in the couple's allegations, and they refused to pay the claim:

https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/tennessee/tnedce/3:2011cv00219/60853/32/0.pdf?ts=1377056649

"The Sun also neglected to mention that the manufactured media coverage that launched the 1990s black-church-arson juggernaut, fueled by former USA Today reporter Gary Fields’s 61 fear-mongering stories, fell apart under scrutiny. Fields’s own employer was forced to admit that “analysis of the 64 fires since 1995 shows only four can be conclusively shown to be racially motivated.”

One of those fires was at an inner-city church in my town. Citizens rallied around the church leaders and members, offering aid. But the church leaders were pretty closed-mouth about the incident. The church elders collected the insurance money, and never bothered to rebuild. The scuttlebutt was that they had burned their own church down for the insurance money. No critics dared say that out loud for fear of being accused of racism. It appears that the church elders capitalized on reports of other alleged incidents of the era.

We are in agreement.

I think ALL violent crimes are "hate crimes" in the sense that whatever the criminal wants is more important to him/her than the humanity of the victim.

I don't believe one mugging victim (or murder victim or rape victim or arson victim) is any more special than the next.

All violent crimes may be "hate crimes" in the sense that whatever the criminal wants is more important to him/her than the humanity of the victim, but since that particular sense isn't the definition of hate crime, or really any crime for that matter, it's purely irrelevant.

If a person is so intolerant of a group that society has identified as a group, that the person commits a crime intended to terrorize the group or is directed at the victim because of their membership in the group, that's a hate crime.

And just because you don't think one murder victim or rape victim is more "special" than the next means you haven't thought very much about criminal law and criminal punishment. All murders and rapes and their victims are not equal. Being the victim of a hate crime doesn't make a victim "special," and the fact that you seem to resent that victims of hate crimes are victims of a particular kind of crime that you doubt is even a real crime, that really happens, even in the wake of SC, explains why there is a catagory of crime called "hate crime."

First degree murder is a different crime than manslaughter, with vastly different levels of punishment. The victim in both cases is every bit as dead. That's not the point.

The difference is the attitude and actions of the person who caused the death. Nobody has a problem with the fact that there are different levels of crime when someone is killed. Deliberately ambushing someone and shooting them is a different crime than killing someone because you were texting and ran a red light. Both serious, but premeditated murder is worse.

A hate crime enhancement to a charge kicks it up a level in severity based on the intent of the perpetrator. The complaint often heard by opponents of hate crime designations is how can you judge someone's state of mind? Easy. Exactly the same way you do when deciding whether to charge someone who killed somebody with murder, manslaughter, or no charge at all. We make decisions about crimes based on intent all the time.

Sorry, I really don't see large numbers of people improperly spending too many years in prison because they were convicted of a crime and unfairly were sentenced with a hate crime enhancement. This is not a problem. The level of resentment and ridicule directed at the hate crime designation seems to me to be wildly out of proportion to any actual abuses.

Yes, some hate crimes are faked. So are some burglaries. Police don't just investigate hate crimes with an eye toward making sure they actually happened. They do that with all crimes.

You make valid points regarding Murder I vs Manslaughter.

I was talking more about something along these lines:

1. A mugger cold-bloodedly kills a complete stranger in a park for his watch.

2. A mugger cold-bloodedly kills a complete stranger in a park because he's gay.

3. The crimes were otherwise identical.

Why is there a special designation for the second victim, but not the first?

Is the first victim "less" than the the second in that case? Was the loss of the second victim so much more a tragedy that his killer should receive a greater punishment? Is his family more grieved?

"Being the victim of a hate crime doesn't make a victim "special," and the fact that you seem to resent that victims of hate crimes are victims of a particular kind of crime that you doubt is even a real crime, that really happens, even in the wake of SC, explains why there is a catagory of crime called "hate crime.""

In my initial post, I specifically called out the Charleston situation as being a racially motivated crime. Which makes most of this snippet complete nonsense.

I do think hate crime legislation make some victims "special" in the sense of how those cases are handled in the criminal justice system. How can you think otherwise? Isn't that the very purpose of hate crimes legislation?

The difference is that with a "hate crime" we are actually punishing the perpetrator for his thoughts (enhanced penalties for "hate crimes"), in addition to the punishment for his actions. Punishing thoughts is not just.

Hate crimes are actually two crimes and each of those crimes has to be proven.

There is the initial crime (murder, attempted murder, assault, arson, etc) and then there is the hate crime (a deliberate attempt to intimidate, harrass, terrorize, force an individual or group to leave an area [similar to ethnic cleansing}).

Hate crimes are not thought crimes. People can think whatever they want. Prosecutors have to prove that the crime was specifically motivated to terrorize the victim and others similar to the victim.

Even in fairly liberal places, hate crime prosecutions are rare, because of the burden of proof on the prosecutor to make the case. The victim being a member of a different race is never going to be enough in and of itself to make the case. Many cases in the Bay Area that have seemed pretty likely ot be hate crimes, haven't been prosecuted as hate crimes due to the difficulty of making the case.

We have laws against terrorism as well. Hate crimes are really just another form of domestic terrorism, which the US has a very long history of.