To go back to Trudy's example, if you stab someone in an argument, maybe you have been thinking about it for weeks, maybe it was partly because they were gay, black, etc., I really can't know.

Well, there are trials and reasonable doubt and stuff. You don't just determine a hate crime willy nilly.

If you want to make burning a cross a specific crime with a specific punishment (for historical reasons, as representing a threat, whatever), I don't have a problem with that.

Maybe a better example is this: Beating someone to death is a crime with a punishment. Beating Matthew Sheppard to death was that crime and a threat to the gay community.

And again, this is what make the whole concept difficult for me. You seem to be saying that if this same act (taking the wafer) was motivated because the guy hated the Church it should be treated differently.

Yes, that's what makes it a hate crime. If you concede that taking the wafer was a crime, you would add additional punishment because the motivation for the crime was bias.

Personally, as a juror, I don't want to have to make those distinctions based on what may or may not have been in someone's mind.

but, that's exactly the job of the jury. You listen to the evidence on both sides and decide if you think that the crime was motivated by bias or not.

Maybe a better example is this: Beating someone to death is a crime with a punishment. Beating Matthew Sheppard to death was that crime and a threat to the gay community.

I guess I just look at it from the reverse angle whereby somehow that makes beating someone to death just because you like doing that a lesser offense. And my brain just can't go there.

but, that's exactly the job of the jury. You listen to the evidence on both sides and decide if you think that the crime was motivated by bias or not.

Well, I guess it is now. Generally, I think that juries should judge the crime and not the motivations behind the crime.

I don't know that I'd say lesser offense. Someone's still dead either way. But the second one has more victims.

was it a catholic church?

Presbyterian. I'm not even sure there was a Catholic church. In Googling to try to find out, I discovered there was one by the '80s, because it had the distinction of having a pedophile priest.

Well, I guess it is now. Generally, I think that juries should judge the crime and not the motivations behind the crime.

I don't think there is anything "now" about it though. Juries have been taking premeditation and heat of the moment, etc, into account for a long time.

Like I said, I go back and forth on hate crime legislation, but they were just an expansion of what we were already doing with sentences, not some bold new thing.

For those who wondered, it was a spokeswoman for the church who first called it a hate crime.

“We don’t know 100 percent what Mr. Cook's motivation was,” Susan Fani, a spokeswoman with the local Catholic diocese, told myfoxorlando.com. “However, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.”

Because what? Suddenly all the Catholic Churches would start fearing for their communion wafers? It was an implicit threat against the body of Christ?

It seems more like a hate peccadillo to me.