A person who will attack another because he needs money will need money again... and soon. He won't stop until someone gives him all the money he needs. See how that works?

The homophobe/racist is being punished, just like everyone else. What makes his crime so much more heinous than a run-of-the-mill murder? An idea?

I'm not a supporter of the prosecution of ideas, no matter how bad they may be.

Yes, and you can make money without robbing someone also.

However, bloodshed is the only think that will satisfy the racist/homophobe.He deserves greater punihshment because his motives are more wicked and he's likely to hurt much more people (homophobes/racist develop a patern of actively stalking and hurting the objects of their prejudice, urting much more people).

What does the prosecution of ideeas have to do with this? No one's being prosecuted for thinking anything, they're being prosecuted for their actions, and their motives are viable indicators of how dangerous these individuals really are.

No, you're prosecuting them for an idea. If a person is raped, the perp is prosecuted and punished for that crime.

But if that person is a Klan member and rapes a black woman, that person is punished MORE. How is that NOT the prosecution of an idea?

If the act is heinous (such as torture), the person is usually punished more harshly for the lack of remorse and cruel nature of the crime. If the person is a repeat offender, the punishment is more harsh the second or third time around. The only difference here is the idea of why the crime was committed.

Small world ain't it?

Don't want to derail the thread but what are you taking? I'm currently on coop at RIM and only have 4B left ahead of me in Electrical Engineering.

Also I completely agree with your view on racism (or lack thereof) in Canada. In my personal experiences as being born and raised in Canada with an Indian background, I have never been attacked for my colour or background or any of that. In high school I integrated into a group of friends consisting of Chinese, Spanish, Romanian, Guyanese, American, British, Scottish, Irish, Italian, Korean, Vietnamese and Middle Eastern backgrounds. A single group of friends covering all those bases in almost equal proportion. I'm not saying Canada is immune to racism but I find that a pretty incredible feat and a pretty rare thing around the world. Some of the people to that group were fairly new to Canada and completely astonished at the fact that not everyone looked in unison in the cafeteria (one giant sea of a single color) and really appreciated what they had found.

Similarly my closest friend circle in university consists of me (a Canadian born Hindu), a Canadian born Muslim, an Egyptian Christian and a Caucasian athiest.  The conversations and healthy debates are very amusing and I've learned a lot from each of them. It's absolutely wonderful to have such a breadth and wide ranging set of knowledge, background and experiences right in front of you like that.

Further proof of tolerance of different cultures and races in Canada is Russel Peters. If we couldn't freely laugh at our own race tendencies and others without feeling uncomfortable or unbiased about who we and those around us are, he never would have made it as big as he did.

Yes, and the ideea matters, I never said otherwise. However he's being prosecuted for his actions, his motives being criteria used to determine how dangerous the individual is.

Ignoring that harsher punishment has not shown itself to be a deterrent to violent crime in almost every instance, it's not being used to determine how dangerous the individual is, the crime showed that with facts. It's used as punishment for committing an unpopular crime and allows equal crimes to be punished more harshly in certain instances.

These are CRIMES. The motive for almost every one of them is a bad one. The person could hate short people, gingers, Republicans, Democrats, metrosexuals, rich people, poor people, blah blah blah. Why are we allowing courts to include the victim and use subjective reasoning to establish punishment when the crime itself speaks volumes about the type of person being prosecuted?

It's a "feel good" law. I HATE "feel good" laws. A crime was committed. That should be enough for anyone.

Cool that's awesome! I'm in arts, probably to become a history major. I'm in first year and don't have to pick my major until second year.

How is the co-op at RIM? Its pretty cool such a big company is based here in Waterloo!

Ah. So you're on the clean side of campus... which isn't saying much. Why is our campus so ugly? haha. That's pretty sweet with arts. Despite being in engineering I've always loved drama.and history. When I was growing up I wanted to be an astronaut or a paleontologist.... mostly because of movies. Go figure

RIM is pretty sweet. The job is fun and has lots of perks. Lots of cool people too with lots in common. We're pretty much all Kitchener/Waterloo natives. You from KW?

Haha I like the campus! Some of the buildings could use an upgrade! All the construction is pretty crazy, some new stuff going in! Lol you could still be an astronaut! keep trying. haha.

That's cool, RIM seems pretty sweet. I'm from Brantford, about 45 minutes from KW. Not a bad city but glad to be gone for a while!

What do you do for fun around KW?

Gee in that case the robber is clearly worse.

He could of made money other ways and specifically chose to hurt someone.

While the racist only had the one outlet.

In otherwords... your reasoning is very poor.

Prosecuting people for their motives is a fools action.