Rationalization

[unixronin]

Q:  What do you do when you and two of your buddies, in a drunken haze, beat another acquaintance to death over a period of 24 hours or so, wrap his naked body in a tarpaulin and hide it in his garage, then get turned in to the police ten days later by a third friend to whom you boasted of the murder (and to whom you emailed camera-phone photos, at work, during the process)?

A:  If you live in Crotherton, Indiana, you claim that he was gay¹, and that it's therefore OK because you were afraid Teh Gay would get on you.

[1]  He wasn't.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The "hate crime" legislation I could get behind would be to make any form of hate or mental state induced by that hate or hate-associated fear, panic, or belief that one is "right" as a result of some hate creed--make that all totally inadmissable.

States can do this. They can make all the "I was right because" defenses based on hate get excluded by the judge so that the jury never, ever hears them.

I can definitely get behind that. No-one in their right mind would seriously entertain the idea of allowing Timothy McVeigh to use his hatred and fear of the government as an affirmative defense. So why should we allow anyone to use hatred and fear of gays, brown people, white people, yellow people, fat people, bikers, Moslems, Amerinds, Jews as an affirmative defense?