North Star Writers Group

On the heels of President Bush’s war-funding bill veto will likely come another, just the third to join the short list of vetoes issued during Bush’s tenure at the White House. The proposed Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday despite the accompanying White House veto threat, includes provisions that would make it possible for federal investigation and prosecution of any hate crime, as well as a more-publicized tenet that expands the definition of hate crimes to include attacks based on sexual orientation, transgender identity, gender and disability.

Currently, hate crimes are only taken to the federal level if they involve federally protected activities, such as voting, attending school and moving across state lines, and cover violence based on race, religion and national origin.

Most media and public attention is focused on the clause that offers greater protection for sexual minorities. But it shouldn’t even be news. Federal hate-crimes protection for homosexuals, transgender individuals and other members of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community should have been a part of national law for years, especially given the 1993 rape and murder of 21-year-old Brandon Teena, a transgender individual, and the widely publicized, brutal slaying of Matthew Shepard, a homosexual, in 1998.

According to FBI reports, 14 percent of 2005 hate crimes were motivated by sexual orientation, which is just slightly less than the percent of attacks based on religion and greater than the percent of attacks based on ethnicity, two groups that are currently protected under the law. Those in the sexual minority deserve the same protection as other minorities because they are just as abused and just as worthy of it. But not only is this protection not afforded them, but arguments against the proposed revisions to hate crime laws are based on prejudices that should be a mere memory in the year 2007.

Some House Republicans opposed to the bill countered that it made no mention of the elderly or of the military. Others, including Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, argued that everyone should be equally protected under Constitutional law, with no exceptions being made for minority populations.

First, the very definition of hate crime eliminates the need to include the elderly and military service members. It is a sad fact that the elderly are targeted for crime, but those who commit the crimes are not doing so because they have a deep-seeded hatred for old people, but because the elderly are a vulnerable population and make for easy prey. That is not to say that laws shouldn’t be enacted that call for harsher punishments for those who commit crimes against the elderly, but they cannot accurately be called “hate crimes.” Members of the military, while facing danger in times of war overseas, are not common victims of hate-based crimes on their home turf.

Second, while every American citizen has a Constitutional right to protection, those in minority groups are in a unique situation. Simply being who they are inspires people to commit violence against them. Additionally, if we were all to have the equal protection Rep. Smith suggests, we would have to eliminate all hate crime laws covering race, religion and national origin. Doing away with hate crime laws altogether would be an injustice, and members of both parties would likely oppose it. So these groups are and will continue to rightfully be protected, but the still-unaccepted sexual minorities are not.

Perhaps the weakest argument against the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Protection Act is the one put forth by the religious right – that this act would take away their right to free speech and hold them accountable for speaking out against homosexuality. Religious leaders argue that under the act, they will be unable to preach about the biblical immorality of homosexuality. While it is baffling that any group still finds it necessary, and expects it to be legal, to berate a group of people unabashedly in the year 2007 (imagine if they were to attack racial minorities so fervently), that is not the issue here. What’s important is the fact that the proposed act would in no way take away their right to free speech, as it covers only physical acts against these groups. Perhaps the religious right should also consider that they, under current hate crime laws, are protected against hate-related attacks, and reflect on what it might be like if that were to be taken away from them.

Because there are so many opposing voices to this bill, and so many of them stand in opposition solely because of the bill’s intention to expand the targeted groups of hate crime to include LGBT individuals, it is quite obvious that homosexual hate is a problem, and that what the bill is proposing is absolutely, and unfortunately, necessary.

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