Man sentenced to 18 years for bombing church that was hosting drag event

Wow the US is going soft on terrorists. 18years is nothing.

I wonder how many years an Arab man would get for the same crime.

He threw two Molotov cocktails at a an empty church. Causing "damage" with no injuries. He got a plea deal, admitting to two felonies:

committing a church arson hate crime and using fire and explosives to commit a felony.

So this was elevated because of the bigoted and terroristic nature of the crime. 18 years is a significant and appropriate sentence.
- I'm fine with whatever sentence length causes him to be reformed.
  
  Do you believe he will be reformed after 18 years in prison?
It wasn’t always this way. Eric Rudolph got 4 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Timothy McVeigh got the death penalty. Ted Kaczynski got 8 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Unfortunately after 9/11 we seem to have decided only brown people can be terrorists despite the fact that the FBI’s own data suggests right wing domestic terrorism has always posed a greater threat to us than that of foreign actors.

Edit: Attention apologists, I have zero interest in your attempts to downplay this person’s act of terrorism. You're just going to be blocked.
- Idk. The KKK blew up an awful lot of churches.
- Kaczynski
  
  He's dead!! He died last year. I found his manifesto interesting in my teens. Didn't know he died.
- Eric Rudolph
  
  Killed two people in multiple bombings, injured many more.
  
  Timothy McVeigh
  
  Killed 168 people. The OKC bombing was the 9/11 before 9/11.
  
  Ted Kaczynski
  
  Killed 3 people, and injured many more across multiple bombings.
  
  The guy in the article threw a couple of fire bombs at an empty church in an attempt to stop something from happening there in the future.
  
  Unfortunately after 9/11 we seem to have decided only brown people can be terrorists despite the fact that the FBI’s own data suggests right wing domestic terrorism has always posed a greater threat to us than that of foreign actors.
  
  Now I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, but the argument you made, based on the comparison to people who were intentionally trying to kill people (and successfully did so) to someone who apparently was not trying to kill anyone makes, is incredibly weak.
- I mean, you’re comparing serial killers/murderers to an arsonist that killed no one so that you can have an argument that we’re going lax on these people?
  
  Come on man.
He wouldn't get anything, officially. He'd be off the books in some offshore military prison.
- Or he’d be killed during apprehension.
"I wonder" is the term one uses right before they say to themselves "let me go research it to make sure my assumptions are correct."

Everyone who is afraid of LGBT shit, is secretly really worried that if they ever felt safe enough to try it, they'd love it. The internal shame they carry causes them to lash out wildly at anything even remotely entwined with the idea that LGBT is normal. Because then that means they could be sucking all the dick they want, but aren't because they're too cowardly and intimidated to follow through. So, instead, they firebomb churches.

Let history remark about all the ugliness thrown our way, boy, they really coulda used a cock to suck. At least in prison he'll be able to suck away to his hearts content.

While that may be true in many cases, it is important to remember that straight people are perfectly capable of being hateful, homophobic monsters. Placing all the blame of LGBT hate on LGBT people, openly or not, isn't nearly the whole story.
- And it's the only oppressed group I ever hear this about.
  
  You never hear that all of the bigots who hate Muslims secretly want to be Muslim. Because they don't. They're just bigots. But somehow, according to some people, every homophobic bigot out there secretly wants a big cock down their throat.
- Although personally I've gotten hate from other LGBT people about as often as straight people, it's definitally a problem
- I was mocking him, and to anybody who might be impressed by his acts, also mocking them (hopefully) out of their decision. Like, if everyone widely talks about how people who attack the LGBT community secretly love cock, maybe the next perpetrator will be too embarrassed to follow through on their plans. Especially if afterwards the only thing that's said about him and his evil deeds is "man that dude really likes suckin dick."
  
  I'm not blaming LGBT people for LGBT hate. that's... yeah that's not it.
More likely he'll be forcibly sodomized and come to hate gay people even more, though it isn't gay people doing it. It's a self-fulfilling circle of hatred.
- A man doing anal with another guy is pretty gay. It is pretty hard to say someone who routinely does that is straight.
Pretty sure every guy secretly wants to gobble down some dick!

No paywall

What a fucking imbecile. 18 years is WAAAAYYY too lenient for attempted mass murder. He should be locked away from other people for the rest of his miserable life.

It's very true that people who target LGBTQ are secretly sexually frustrated and unhappy. They hate the fact that there are other people in the world who have found themselves, have a place to belong, and have happy lives. So they target them as if somehow hurting those people will change their own fate.

And it only ever makes thing worse for every person on earth. For the LGBTQ community, it makes us more afraid and forced to arm ourselves, for the rest of the world it means nobody is safe from some deranged idiot's mental problems and self-hatred turning into violence.