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1) I can't work out what would make someone do something like this. It's... stupefying. They're gay, so they need killed? What is the thought process there? We need to try harder to understand what leads to this kind of event.

2) It worries me when politicians say things like, "Murder and hatred are the two most serious crimes in society." Hatred is not, should not, must not ever be allowed to be a crime. I hope someone calls Peres on this. In the process of pondering point 1, we should remember that people have the right to hate. What they don't have the right to do is murder. Hate is a thought; murder is an action. We can't make thought a crime.

JW

There is a grey area which is presently a real issue here in Scotland. Incitement.

On Saturday night I heard four guys from Belfast standing at a bar over here (Scotland) and one of them started on about gay people. (I knew the pride march had been on and wondered if some of their families had mentioned it to them on the phone and maybe that's why they brought the subject up.)

Now, the whole pub heard the following.

"One of them was mincing down the street so Billy went over and banjo'd him....."
(I assumed that some poor guy had been assaulted that afternoon for being presumed gay.)
They all burst out laughing to macho and manly slaps on the back.

My question is, at what point should hatred (thought and felt), then expressed, become criminal?

The Alpha male of the Belfast group of guys was clearly giving a message to his three pals. If his three pals later go on to "banjo" a perceived gay man, isnt the guy who spoke so hatefully about gay people in the first place, guilty of incitement?

What leads to the tragedy in Tel Aviv is people being free to express hatred against another group according to creed, race, colour or sexuality etc.... Or people tacitly justifying such hatred by defending it on scriptural grounds.

To think hatred cannot possibly be a crime. To act on it, is a crime. To speak it, is at the very least, socially unacceptable (as was witnessd by the embarrassed silence surrounding those four guys the other night.) Whether it is actually criminal or not, I believe depends on the circumstances.

Presently in this country if you were to stand up in a pub and deride either catholics/protestants/coloured people, you would certainly be arrested if someone complained to the police. I'm not sure that it would be taken as seriously if the hatred was aimed at gay people.

(And yes, I know, the Belfast guy who was going on about it was probably gay himself.)

Guys,

It is indeed controversial, and of course we've been here before (hateful song lyrics, for example, in which I argued that someone who claims to have been victimised because of a direct incitement to violence that their perpetrator heard in the lyrics of a song should press charges against the artist and leave it to courts to decide, rather than the decidedly draconian act of banning the music in the first place and all the potential infringements to liberty that would involve).

My main question on this one: Is a murder committed for hatred of 'gay people' worse than one committed for any other reason? People commit violent crimes with all sorts of motives (including hatred of their victims as individuals, no matter where the hatred originates). Unless one is willing to argue that hatred itself should be a crime, as Peres says explicitly!, then I can't see how the one crime is worse than the other and therefore deserving of a more severe sentence. It isn't for the government to criminalise thoughts, only actions.

BTW- I'll certainly agree that direct and willful incitement, where it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt, should be a criminal activity. That isn't what happens usually, though. Isn't it possible that someone can hate an ethnic group, for example, and - while archaic and disgusting - their beliefs do not involve causing physical harm on the group they hate? Why is it suddenly their burden to prove that they don't want to cause harm to anyone? Aren't they innocent until proven guilty? Direct and willful incitement, on the other hand, explicitly wishes harm on someone else...

Will-

Yes, and I guess 'group hate' has a particular propensity to grow and thus an argument could be made that it needs particular attention in sentencing in order to set an example. What worries me is more the incitement provisions, where the question of whether a crime has been committed at all could rely on its being of this category - 'hate crime' - and where people can be brought up on incitement charges merely for exercising their freedom of speech.

On the kind of incident we read about above - one where a heinous crime has been committed and is motivated by some of the most ignorant, petty, hateful, sorry, depraved thinking in modern society - I don't think we have much to debate about.

Still, worthwhile pointing out Peres' faux pas, if only for the sake of clarifying that we are still free to think what we like!

JW
Just to tease this out a bit more.

Why would you be so categorically for freedom of speech, even hate filled speech which doesnt incite crime?

Is it because the concept of freedom of speech as a universal principle and right, should be upheld?

Or is it because if we dont uphold ALL freedoms of expression, even bad ones, we may lose some of our good freedoms of speech/expressions etc...?

Shouldnt a mature society say that there is a line, and the line is here? Dont cross it, or suffer the consequences.

I wonder if the yobs in Romejellybean's story were referring to a recent case in New Zealand in which a man was savagely beaten to death with a banjo after allegedly making sexual advances to a drinking partner? The killer, Ferdinand Ambach, used the defense of provocation in his trial, and was ultimately convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, much to the disgust of the victim's family.

The government, on the basis of this and another high-profile trial, has decided to scrap "provocation" as a partial defense. Justice Minister Simon Power said: "I do not believe this defence has any place on the statute books. It wrongly enables defendants to besmirch the character of victims and effectively rewards a lack of self-control."

Progress?

Interesting comments on hate crimes. Israel is a curious story, because gay people have had more freedom in Tel aviv than in Jerusalem. Looks to me like a religious fundamentalist has done this. Motivated by a hatred of homosexuality as a sin in his judgement. It will be important to hear jewish leaders, not just politicians, coming out to condemn the attack. I'm impressed by Peres and his use of the word 'abominable' - that's a cunning rejoinder to a religious attack.

I would also like Christians to recognise that their traditional opposition to gay people inspires this kind of attack in the UK. Remember the bombing of the gay pub in London within the past ten years? You can't present an anti-gay theology then wash your hands when someone kills on the basis of that theology. You say" We don't defend killing, we don't support attacks. No, you don't in principle. But you provide the theological foundations that support homophobic attacks, whether they are verbal or physical. Christian and Jewish anti-gay language is a kind of hate speech.

Well I've used the banjo as a weapon myself a few times; it's surprisingly effective, given the extra weight at the drum end.

On freedom of speech:


"Is it because the concept of freedom of speech as a universal principle and right, should be upheld? Or is it because if we dont uphold ALL freedoms of expression, even bad ones, we may lose some of our good freedoms of speech/expressions etc...?"

You've just given the two reasons I usually cite. The most important one is the one of principle, from which the second derives. We could do with more people thinking like Voltaire, who famously said, "I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," and Noam Chomsky, who said, "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

I recall a decent op-ed by Mick Hume on this, and found it .


Shouldnt a mature society say that there is a line, and the line is here? Dont cross it, or suffer the consequences."

A society that wants to ban certain kinds of speech is not a mature one. A mature society will tolerate all kinds of opinions, will recognise that everybody has the right to express themselves.

Being able to allow speech you find offensive without running to your government to have it shut down is the very definition of maturity!

Gaunilo says-

"[Christians] provide the theological foundations that support homophobic attacks, whether they are verbal or physical. Christian and Jewish anti-gay language is a kind of hate speech."

It certainly can be. But someone's belief that homosexuality is wrong is perfectly valid without being hateful. I disagree with it myself, vehemently, but it isn't "hate speech". That's exactly the kind of accusation intended to shut down the freedom of others to have an opinion and express it. It's a logical leap to go from "Homosexuality is sinful" to "Homosexuality is sinful and God would want us to be violent toward people who engage in it." And it isn't the burden of the person who holds the former to apologise for those who make the leap to the latter.

In any case, while I may agree with you that bad theology contributed to the traditional lack of acceptability for homosexuality in society, it didn't need a theological reason to be that way.

Not sure I agree with you there JW. If you swap 'being homosexual' for 'being black' in the context you mention, it would be considered hate speech.

If someone said 'being black is sinful' would that be considered "perfectly valid?"

It's a perfectly valid thought, if not a correct, logical or desirable one. The question is whether it is speech that should be shut down, and I strongly believe it isn't.