Welcome

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

Today, Wednesday October 28th, 2009, President Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.  This is the first major step in fulfilling his campaign promises to the LGBT community.

LGBT activists have been and continue to complain about the “slow pace” at which the Administration has addressed LGBT concerns, despite that the President has only been President for about nine months.  Hopefully, this event proves his true commitment to our community.

However, the actual work throughout the years in first introducing this bill to the House and Senate has been accomplished by Congressman John Conyers (Democrat from Michigan) and the late Senator Ted Kennedy (Democrat from Massachusetts), respectively.  They had both tried to get their colleagues to vote for hate crimes legislation since 2001; about three years after Matthew Shepard and James Byrd were murdered in hate crimes.

The new Hate Crimes Law inserts, for the first time, “gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability” as protected statuses within the 1969 federal hate crime law which originally protected only actual or perceived hate crime based on “race, color, religion or national origin,” and only when the victim was engaged in “federally protected activity” like voting or going to school.  The new law removes this “federally protected activity” restriction, as well as “give federal authorities greater ability to engage in hate crimes investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue; provide $10 million in funding to help state and local agencies pay for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes; require the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to track statistics on hate crimes against transgender people (statistics for the other groups are already tracked).”

Matthew Shepard

Matthew Shepard was a 21-year old college student who was targeted because he was gay and subsequently tortured, beaten and tied to a fence near Laramie, Wyoming, later dying from massive head injuries on October 7, 1998.  For more information on this hate crime, see the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard

James Byrd

On June 7th, 1998, James Byrd asked for a ride home from three white men who instead beat him, “stripped him naked, chained him by his ankles to their pickup truck, and dragged him for three miles” because he was black.  Though he was alive for most of the dragging, he was finally killed when his right arm and head were severed from his body during the dragging.  For more information on this hate crime, see the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Byrd,_Jr.

There is no indication that Byrd was gay.  He was murdered simply because he was black by two (of three) self-proclaimed racists/white-supremacists.  His name, however, has been attached to this new law in part to emphasize the horrendous nature of hate crimes.

Who Voted for this Law?

Only five Republican Senators voted for the hate crimes bill:  Susan Collins (Maine), Dick Lugar (Indiana), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and George Voinovich (Ohio).

Who Voted Against It?

It is worth publishing the names of those Senators that voted against this hate crimes bill.  There are too many House members to be named.

Idaho:  Republican Senators Mike Crapo and Jim Risch.

Wyoming:  Republican Senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso.

Utah:  Republican Senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Foster Bennett.

Arizona:  Republican Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl.

Kansas:  Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts.

Oklahoma:  Republican Senators Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn.

Texas:  Republican Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Mississippi:  Republican Senators Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker.

Alabama:  Republican Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions.

Georgia:  Republican Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson.

Nevada:  Republican Senator John Ensign.

South Dakota:  Republican Senator John Thune.

Nebraska:  Republican Senator Mike Johanns.

Iowa:  Republican Senator Chuck Grassley.

Louisiana:  Republican Senator David Vitter.

North Carolina:  Republican Senator Richard Burr.

Why Did People Oppose This Hate Crimes Bill?

Some opponents of the hate crimes bill claim that this new law would force people who morally and religiously oppose homosexuality to not voice their opinion for fear of being prosecuted as committing a “hate crime.”  However, the law specifically reads, “Nothing in this Act...shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution."  In other words, fortunately or not, people will still be free to thump their Bibles and give hate speeches against gay people.

Other reasons that opponents have cited that are not really worth going into any detail include, unequal protection, concerns about “thought crimes,” and concerns about double jeopardy.

What’s Next?

After this important law, there are still a number of items that the LGBT community would like President Obama to focus on.  These include repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and “the Defense of Marriage Act” (defining marriage as between a man and a woman, signed by President Clinton) as well as passage of the “Domestic Partners Benefit and Obligations Act” which “would extend family benefits now available to heterosexual federal employees to gay and lesbian federal workers.”

I am confident that these measures, though not yet addressed by the Administration, will come to pass.  The LGBT community needs to exercise some patience with these issues that have understandable underlying senses of urgency.  The President is currently focusing on issues such as war and our national security and health insurance reform that not just affects some of us, but all of us.

Also, it is important to remember that important laws are introduced, debated, and pass or fail, not by the President, but by Congress – exactly how the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act of 2009 came to be.  The President simply signs them into law.

So, it is important that our community pay attention to Congressional and Senatorial elections, so that we support LGBT-friendly candidates who will vote for us and not against us as those many Senators listed above have done. 

Of course, while President Obama has and continues to embody hope for the LGBT community (even though I personally witnessed a tough transition for many gays from supporting Hillary Clinton), we need to spread the responsibility for our own uplifting, not only to others in government and politics who also have a hand in our future, but also to ourselves.
 

References:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/22/hate.crimes/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard_Act

http://www.hrc.org/issues/10454.htm
 

 Article by B Brian Topaz
Image by Sergio Roberto Bichara