And you've made my entire point, I think. Social mores and judgments always come out to play, so trying to tailor laws intended to cover everyone so they are harsher against this group of people, or that group of people, is always going to end up messing things up. Isn't it a "hate crime" to stone a woman to death for having sex with a guy who she isn't married to? Well I think so, but there are certain cultures out there who think its totally justified and, unfortunately, some of them are right here in the States. I also think that rape is a "hate crime" regardless of what ethnicity is involved in either side, but these inconsistent laws don't agree with me. Look at how utterly screwed up the American tax code is - its riddled with exceptions and addendums and caveats, which is basically what "hate crimes" would end up being. Rather than saying "if you do X, then Y happens," we're saying "if you do X against a person in this protected category, then Z happens. If the victim is in that category, which apparently
isn't "protected", then X happens." I say screw that. Let's go back to basics and say "if you do X, then Y happens. Period."
All people should be in that protected category (except rapists, child molesters, and people who talk in the theater. OK, maybe not that last one. Maybe.) Murder should be murder.
But I'm an obsolete dinosaur who sees political correctness as nothing more than soft tyranny, so take that as you will.
Alelou wrote:I'd like to suggest a reason, Rigil, why hate crimes might be punished differently than your basic sociopathic murder: because hate crimes are designed to intimidate an entire group, and have been used throughout our history to do so, and therefore might justifiably be assigned a harsher penalty to make it clear that our society frowns on that. A hate crime isn't prosecuted on the basis of mind reading, but on other related actions of the perpetrator(s), such as racist vandalism, writings, speeches, general pattern of behavior, etc. (Though I do agree this can get kind of dicey and can be abused as just more charges to heap on somebody.)
And it is solely this latter point that causes me to react in this way. It isn't difficult to see grandstanding lawyers injecting imaginary "hate crimes" into a trial so it will be sexier or more likely to get a conviction - what juror wants to explain why they voted against sending that racist/bigot/homophobe to the chair? Murder itself is a "hate crime" which is why I reject the notion that the Law should be focused toward intimidating an entire group; to the more extreme characters in such a group, being singled out for committing such a crime isn't seen as a negative. Do you think a truly devoted white supremacist or a Jihadist is going to be bothered by an additional charge of committing a "hate crime"? They've already accomplished what they wanted to and, if nothing else, being singled out thus is going to be seen by their peers as a badge of honor. Hence, I see the whole notion as being self-fulfilling and frankly counterproductive. Treat them as murderers, punish them to the extent of the law (up to and including execution), and just move on.
I'm also with WarpGirl in noting that T'Les didn't tell T'Pol why she 'retired' until T'Pol asked about it.
And I didn't contest that point. In fact, I rather agreed with it and acknowledged that T'Les acted pretty slimy in "Home," up to the point where she realized the extent of the connection between Trip and her daughter. When she urged Tucker to say something, I got the feeling she suddenly realized just how badly she'd screwed the sehlat. I never got the feeling, even with the Vulcan arc, that Koss realized anything more than "this woman (T'Pol) is insane and nothing good will come of this union." (Which, honestly, was probably true.)
I'm not as inclined to defend Koss. I believe he thought he was acting in T'Pol's and T'Les's best interest as well as his own (or at least his parents'), but I agree that to keep pushing in the face of such obvious reluctance from T'Pol is definitely slimy by our standards. If nothing else, you can conclude that as a husband he's probably going to be an obnoxious prig who thinks he always knows better than she does.
And that too tracks (mostly) with my opinion on him, although I think he was acting more in his own (and his family's) interests than T'Pol's or T'Les'. He has all of the power in this marriage and, if the events of the Vulcan civil war (which was
very civil from what I saw) don't transpire, one can easily extrapolate just how unhappy T'Pol's future is going to be since all Koss needs to do to get her to fall in line is level another threat at her mother. Would he do this? We have no way of knowing that, but given how condescending he was in terms of Trip (my interpretation), I can totally see him starting to resent the role humans play in T'Pol's life, especially when his peers begin discussing that weirdo wife of his.
But then, that also fits with the general Vulcan character we are introduced to in Enterprise, at least until they each have their consciousnesses raised by those messy, imperfect Humans. This is an annoyingly common storyline on ENT, often making it seem like the series is really just one long, self-congratulatory paen to the general superiority of Humanity.
I'd go so far as to say its an annoyingly common storyline in the Trek franchise in general, not just ENT, which is why I very much longed to see an inverse of that for once with Trip/T'Pol - just to be different, I would have loved to have seen a
human "go native" and embrace an alien culture wholeheartedly (in this case, Vulcan) to show that it can go both ways.