I support bigger punishments for hate crimes, but I also agree with Thayer's views. There are enough people imprisoned in the United States as it is. Five years ago I thought posters on a poker forum were smarter than the average population. I've now learned that is not the case.

PatBateman -- please don't talk to me in real life

the line of ........... should express the sarcasm of that statement

@ttfold very well so, I wouldn't want to talk to people that tolerate racism anyway

watching people get mad while arguing with thay3r never gets old

Similar with apartheid in South Africa.

Maybe you were right both times. ducy

To expound on this point, anyone should have the right to call me a f*ggot to my face.

If they are going to kick my ass because of that, then we have a problem.

shutup ******

herp











derp

my hero!

smc

I've been thinking about suicide a lot lately (not committing it myself, just the act/thought process), mainly because my best friend, since I was like 9, James, took his own life about two weeks ago.

Whenever it happens to someone you may know distantly, them people around them say, "we couldnt see this coming," "there were no signs"... etc. when there usually were, just not to the extent that anyone thought anything of it. Not that anyone's to blame in any case...

With James, there was literally nothing. Even the things up until the day before were just absolutely incongruent to someone who was thinking of suicide. He bought a winter coat for $250, a good chunk of change for him, two days before he died... He was planning on joining the Marines, and had all the papers you need signed and ready to go, I think he was going to send them in within a few days... Other stuff as well...

He stayed home after HS to go to a local community college, when most of his closest friends (including me) went away to school. But even then, he had a job with the local ferry's where he recently became a captain, he'd been working there for 4 years... He loved it. In his note he said they were the best four years he could have possibly had. He suffocated himself in his car right by the docks where he worked.

My buddies and I just couldn't fathom him actually going thru with it. He just sat in his car and waited it out. idk.

It made me think that it wasn't something that he had really planned out, and more something that he thought through for a day or two. Which is just heartbreaking to me.

He was the most genuine, caring person I've ever met. He would do anything to help someone out. The amount of people that came back home after finding out was amazing. People he barely even knew came back from Florida (to NY) basically right away because he had that type of impact on people. I think/cry about him every day and even though people say there was nothing you could have done, etc... idk I wish I had communicated with him more when I was at school. But I do know that there prob was nothing I could do.

Idk what my point in this rant was but TUTs' post just made me think of James, and I hadn't really talked to anyone other than my close friends from home about him.

Thanks for sharing Champ and TUTS. Both stories are really heartbreaking

lol

you dont get it, it isnt just about physical violence but the root of the violence as well.

so.. say you have a child that is 6 or 7 years old.

you think it's okay for a stranger to walk up to your child on the street and tell her/him that it is right to hate black people or that from now on he/she has to pray to god every day and worship him and hate people that are gay or else it is an eternity in a lake of fire?

you may not believe this nonsense but there are people that are and there are people that are more vulnerable to bull**** like this and when you grant people the right to teach other people hateful ideas like that without punishment you are no better than them.

Goes hand in hand with this:

Speaking and listening should always be allowed. Flogging gay black people should never be allowed.

:-/


If some idiot thinks a gay person will rot in hell what do I care? I'll just think less of that person and tell others why.

It doesn't bother me but I can see how it would bother other gay guys. In any event, it shouldn't be a crime.

I think it's very insensitive to direct racial slurs or homophobic insults at others, but the best way to deal with that is to call the offender out on it. Or ignore it. There's no need to designate everything as a crime.

The edit doesn't make it any less wrong.

Champ and TUTS, those were some sad stories indeed. Usually when I hear people say "we had no idea" or whatever, I think they are unaware because the person in trouble feels he/she has nobody to confide in, to tell them exactly what is going on. Unfortunately in our society if you share any kind of feelings of sadness/despair/depression you become a bit of a pariah. IMO just about everyone struggles with something, but very few of us have people they can trust to not judge them for admitting their struggles. I certainly don't, and that bothers me because what if someday things get bad for me? Who do I go to? If we as humans were more compassionate and less judgemental towards people who are open about their feelings I think we'd have way fewer stories like the ones shared above.

really good post champ.
i decided to post that article because chilin_dude said he couldnt understand why people would kill themselves. his life gives me a whole different perspective on it that i still cant full even understand. he just lived in a world of hurt, and he was self aware of it, and wanted nothing more to be "normal". his parents loved him so much and gave him so much help, as much as possible, but ultimately, he could not live within himself anymore (i dont even know if that makes sense, but it does to me).
so is suicide really as selfish as i once thought? i dont know anymore. we are given this fairy-tale idea of life, but why is it so selfish if we can't handle it? i think of it like, say 1,000 cars roll of an assembly line, and even though they all went through the same process, one of those cars might just malfunction, who knows why. the car is then destroyed. we are so much more complicated than cars, but some of us just are not built to handle living....though when you get to the bottom of it, our only real function of life is living. so its confusing to me. and im rambling. life is just so uber complicated.

I don't think that's okay. Nor is it okay to curse like a sailor around children. But I see people do that every time I attend a baseball game and they don't get arrested for it. A nasty look is enough to deter that kind of behavior.

Racists will be racists, you can't change that. It's pretty much cultural and institutionalized. All acts of aggression should be punished to it's fullest extent, thoughts can not. I think society would be much better if bigots could have their own places/restaurants etc. Their businesses will perform poorly and they will all be grouped together so we can all laugh at them/protest them/teach others how ******ed and illogical they are. They also won't be forced to interact with those that they hate and society benefits from that.

Seems like the nut worst example for the point you are trying to make. Kirby is an example of an intelligent poster making a correct point.

But "the state" now has the oppurtinity to protect us as society against something like this again. And this is necessary because the average person is easily influenced and missguided.
We as society can easily be trapped again by facism and racism. Your state protects you from it by educating people. Because moral values are nothing we have in us from the moment we are born, we learn about it from our parents and in school (from the state).

And another way to protect us from being influenced again by eg racism is to do not let people spew hatred and prejudices in public for the reasons I stated above. And I don't think there is anything wrong with it.


And this is a horrible idea that never worked and never will work out well.