[Andrew]

Murders take place for many reasons - money, jealousy, drugs. But when one person kills another because of that person's religion, race or sexual orientation and for no other reason, that's a hate crime. Hate crimes, unlike most murders, also are usually inflicted on people the killers don't know. Most murders arise out of a dispute. A hate crime happens when someone decides to kill the first black person or gay person he or she can find.

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Name : Andrew, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 35, City : Huntington, State : NY Country : United States, Occupation : Reporter, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

[Amanda C.]

In reference to the young gay man murdered in Wyoming: Isn't any act of murder a hate crime? What exactly consitutes a hate crime?

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Name : Amanda C., Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 22, City : San Diego, State : CA Country : United States, 

[gary21769]

Murder is a hate crime when the motive is to send a message to a group of people who are similar to the victim. The killer is saying, 'I think all people in this category should be killed.' Naturally, a murder that is motivated by hatred of an entire category of people is a very different crime than other kinds of murder. It's not a crime of passion, or a crime of opportunity, or a crime of desperation. It is murder as a political statement -- against gay people, against women, against people of a particular race, or against people of a particular religion. The terrorist doesn't care at all who you are as a person. He doesn't care if you pay your bills on time, or have three kids and a dog at home. He doesn't care what you do for a living, or what you had yesterday for lunch. None of this matters to him, because it's not you -- as an individual human being living a full and complex life -- that he wants to frighten. You don't matter to him at all. You are only a prop he intends to use to terrorize other people like you. Not all hate crimes end in the victim's death, of course. People survive terrorist attacks of other kinds as well, but that does nothing to diminish terrorism as the primary motive. There is one thing, however, that separates hate crimes against gay people from other kinds of hate crimes, and may be a secondary motive, after terrorism. A man who lashes out at people of another race, or another religion, or against women, is probably not secretly afraid that he might be a member of that group. But for what it's worth, the August 1996 edition of the 'Journal of Abnormal Psychology' published research that documents how levels of homophobia in straight men are roughly proportionate to their levels of homosexual arousal. According to the research, 80 percent of those straight men who experienced the most dread and discomfort in scenarios involving interaction with gay men, exhibited moderate or significant sexual arousal when shown explicit gay pornography. The researchers suggested that the level of arousal might have been even higher if the homophobic men hadn't experienced such high anxiety. Even with that anxiety, homophobic straight men in the study were more than twice as likely as non-homophobic straight men to develop erections while viewing gay porn. So, self-hatred may be a contributing factor in some anti-gay attacks.

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Name : gary21769, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Gay, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 34, City : san jose, State : CA Country : United States, Occupation : professional, Social class : Middle class, 

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