That's actually what we were talking about in class.
I just copied this from the FBI website:
A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.
It doesn't specify that the crime must be a violent act, just that perpetrator targets a victim because of (in this case) sexual orientation. From what our professor said, (again- I'm not sure if this is true so please correct me if you know otherwise) the roommate did in fact know that Tyler was homosexual. Do you think that the roommate would have still made the video & streamed it live if he had been having sex with a girl instead?
|