Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 - Read OP

Go back and read what I said.

No. It's not. That's the point. Existing legislation doesn't cover modern society. So it needs amendments, like many other legislation over the years.

Road traffic legislation has been amended many times times the 1960s!

Asking the same question over and over, is demonstrating you don’t actually accept the premise that pointing out you’re looking for examples of how you can be abused, is weird. The legislation has nothing to do with your being gay, it could be that you are abused on the grounds of any of the protected characteristics referenced in the Bill -

Those protected characteristics are race, colour, nationality, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, and disability.

Couple of weeks ago there was a discussion raised about the idea that ‘gammon’ is a racially motivated term. Nothing to do with your sexual orientation, and I’m sure true to form if someone were to refer to you as gammon you’d be sure to find it hilarious, cos let’s be honest it’s fcuking accurate AF, but there are undoubtedly some knobheads who find the term offensive and complain about how they do not wish to be referred to as gammon.

Would you think of their complaint as reasonable? Do you think someone who uses the term is motivated by racism? There’s your example of something which anyone can say today, which may be regarded as meeting the criteria for a hate crime, or incitement to hatred - the argument that their actions were motivated by racism. If you don’t think so, because you’re such a reasonable fellow, then you’ve really nothing to be concerned about, because the same standards which are applied to everyone else, equally apply to you 👌

Equal protection under the law is a guiding principle of the US Constitution. I know our system is different, but the principle of equal protection seems to me to be universally valid. By giving special status, or extra protection, to specific groups (race, religion etc, etc) you are diluting equal protection. If someone commits a truly hateful violent act against me, then the penalty will be less, because as a white Irish heterosexual male, I am unlikely to have protected status. But the damage and suffering I experiance can be just as great as for any other person.

The law should be based on the objective and proven criminal act of the perpetrator, not on what could be an arbitrary distinction between protected and other groups.

To say that protected groups suffer much more from hate crime is in a sense irrelevant: the solution to this is vigorous law enforcement against all perpetrators of hate crime. That should help vulnerablle people as much as special protected status, with the added benefit of avoiding opposition from people outside the specially protected categories.

Its actually not a threat of violence though, it's merely an opinion. Saying all travellers should be killed is not the same as trying to invite people to.actually kill them.

It's incitement to hatred

There’s no special status or extra protection being given to specific groups through. Everyone is being granted the same protection on the basis of the protected characteristics named in the Bill. If the motivation for attacking you was because you’re a white heterosexual male, then it’s those motivations which will determine that the Gardaí are investigating a possible hate crime. The law is still based upon an objective criminal act, it doesn’t mean the perpetrator(s) will be prosecuted, because they’d have to be found first (providing they didn’t stick around for questioning).

It’s because specific groups weren’t previously protected, is the reason for the updating of the legislation, and they need it precisely because of people who view themselves as being outside the protected characteristics, and view other people as being unworthy of equal protection in Irish society.

Evidence, that anyone is out to get you, would be nice, particularly if you’re claiming that there’s lots of sensitive types around looking to be offended, while asking me what I mean by ‘being targeted’ 🤨

It's why some are objecting. A lot of others objecting don't actually support equality in the first place.

Have you ‘ere a link at all to the article, or was it in the offline version? It just sounds like something Gript would be all over like flies on a shyte if Helen McEntee expressed those sort of sentiments about any penalties for attacking white heterosexual males… the very idea she would mention white heterosexual males at all even, is extraordinary 😳

Can you please point me to the UN guidance you are talking about?