As a victim of a hate crime I do like them.
While in high school I was beat up because I was gay. The guy who did it was arrested and charged with a hate crime. Hate crime laws do exist for a reason. I was beat up for being gay, nothing more. I didn't insult this person, harm him, steal from him, or threaten him in any way. Initially I was told by the school's administrator that there really wasn't anything he could do since I was "flaunting" my sexual orientation. Flaunting apparently means eaves dropping. Basically I was told that I should take a beating and brush it off. They weren't even going to suspend the guy until the cops got involved because I went outside to a pay phone and called 911. The standard at the time was any violence resulted in a no questions asked 10 day suspension. I had to get 10 stitches, had a black eye, bruised kidney, and was black and blue from head to toe. He was arrested 2 weeks later and spent 6 months in juvenile detention. He had no prior record, but was given that length of sentence due to the hate crime requirements.
To this day I occasionally run into this guy in Tallahassee and he always apologizes. He told me that even if he hadn't been suspended and thrown in jail that he would have probably kept beating me up.
Hate crimes add an additional punishment to any number of crimes if they are based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, and political affiliation. Yes it's government sanctioned, but it also says that it will not be tolerated if you want to be violent against a specific group based on an, often times, irrational hatred of that group.
