[scott snedeker]

Changing attitudes from " well this victim is just a faggot" and underpunishing to "I better be careful and not underpunish because this is a hate crime," would be a reason for me to support hate crime legislation. The fact that gay and transgender minorities are indentified is yet another outward sign of the evolution of sensitvity and sensibility of more and more people in our counrty. I find this reassuring.

I myself have experienced discrimination by law enforcement. When two police officers refuse to file a police report when My ex broke into my house and attacked me, I had to threaten them with filing a witness report and handing it personally to their seargent after which they would have to explain to their seargent why they did not file a police report when they were at the scene ( the reason was that they didn't want to bother with protecting a worthless deviant homosexual faggot....in other words, me)

The open letter from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in my opinion is a very complex eloquently logically written substantiation of....fear of retaliation for not "accepting our lesser entitlement" to respond to bigoted individuals' trepasses against us in society and within the legal system. "Don't anger 'the man' with your protests and retaliation or he will give a real reason to cry" is the fear we were all taught by our oppressors. This IMO is a complacency with remaining less worthy faggots now that it's not so bad anymore.

Some would consider this complacency disrespectful to the sacrifices our "fore-faggots" (a radfae term of genuine respect) made for our benefit.

I see Hate crimes legislation likened to Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity. Flaws in fairness to all individuals can be indentified in all of these but these were imperfect solutions to a very imperfect society.