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The hate crimes bill has little to do with free speech.

Mitigating circumstance has always been a factor in deciding the punishment for crimes. Motive being a major factor in deciding the degree' of punishment.

Free speech is a constitutional liberty to express ones opinion. The constitutionally inalienable right of each person to be neither slandered nor libeled mitigates this liberty.

When one claims an inalienable right to slander or libel, one is subverting "Liberty" into "License". Not granted constitutionally is "License of speech".

Much as it is a constitutional Liberty to own and bear arms. However, when this owning and bearing of guns becomes "License" to shoot ones neighbor, the shooter is violating the constitutional rights of the victim.

If the victim was coming after the shooter with a butcher knife, we have "mitigating circumstance". The motive becomes self-preservation/protection and the shooting is devalued from "murder".

If a person shoots another person because he hates people who pick their nose in public, it becomes a hate crime. The "mitigating circumstance" becomes "hatred". The crime should carry a higher valuation.

If a person kills another person for hatred, this should carry a higher valuation. That the killer might mention this hatred and it be testified to, does not infringe upon the man's free speech. That free speech merely becomes evidence of mitigating circumstance.

Two young men lured a young man to take a ride from them. Pretending they, themselves, were homosexual (as was he). They would later testify conclusively that no propositioning of sexual behavior occurred.

The drove him to an out of the way location, beat him, crucified him to a fence and tortured him. They murdered him and proudly proclaimed to have done so because he was a homosexual.

There was nobody in sight or hearing distance to hear any "free speech" during this activity. Only the marks of being pistol-whipped and a bloody face showing clean streaks where the tears had fallen from the boys eyes, a crime of hatred that could only be felt, not heard.

Hate crimes has nothing to do with free speech.

Learn more about this author, Duane Kuehn.
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