WASHINGTON (ABP) — Despite a veto threat from President Bush, a large majority of the House of Representatives voted May 3 to add gender, sexual orientation and disability to the categories protected under federal hate-crimes laws.
On a 237-180 vote, the House passed the “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007,” H.R. 1592. The bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity to race, religion, national origin and other identity markers already protected under federal law.
Among those voting for the bill were 25 Republicans and the vast majority of the chamber's Democrats.
The bill would also make it easier for federal authorities to assist local and state police in investigating crimes in which the victim is singled out because of his or her sexual orientation, gender or disability.
According to FBI statistics, an average of 25 Americans a day are victimized by crimes motivated by their ethnic background, religion, sexual orientation or other intrinsic characteristics. For the past four decades, federal law has allowed government intervention in bias crimes based on the victim's “race, color, religion or national origin;” the bill would simply add the new items to the protected characteristics.
“This is an important vote of conscience — a statement of what America is, a society that understands that we accept differences,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a Baptist.
However, a White House statement released just hours before the vote suggested that Bush may exercise his rarely-used veto power on the bill. The statement said the bill “is unnecessary and constitutionally questionable” because state laws already ban violent crime and because it extends the range of crimes in which federal authorities can exert jurisdiction. It added that if the act “were presented to the president, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
Many conservative Christian groups waged an all-out campaign to defeat the bill, in large measure because of the protections if offers homosexuals.
“Criminalizing thoughts as well as actions and creating special categories of victims is unconstitutional,” said a statement from the Family Research Council. “The actions of a majority of the House today undermine the promise of equal protection under the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”
It continued, “There has been no proof that violent crimes perpetrated against any of the groups listed in the bill have not been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, yet now Congress is asking the federal government to get involved in issues that are, and should remain, local concerns.”
But bill supporters have noted several instances in recent years in which investigations into hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation and gender identity were impeded by lack of federal involvement.
One of the most famous hate-crimes cases cited by advocates became the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1999 film “Boys Don't Cry.” In 1993, 21-year-old Nebraska resident Brandon Teena was raped by two male friends after they discovered that Teena — although living as a male — was biologically female. Even though Teena reported the crime, the county sheriff refused to arrest the men responsible. Several days later, they murdered Teena and two witnesses. Teena's mother ended up filing a lawsuit against the county for negligence but was awarded only $17,000.
The bill would also appropriate federal funds to supplement local law-enforcement agencies investigating and prosecuting hate-crimes cases. The Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, cited the case of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was brutally murdered in 1998 in Laramie, Wyo. “[T]he investigation and prosecution of the case cost the community of 28,000 residents about $150,000, forcing the sheriff's department to lay off five deputies in order to save money,” an HRC memo said.
Skip Howard, a member of the First Baptist Church of Memphis, Tenn., said Shepard's murder motivated him to end the silence about his homosexuality. “His death was the catalyst that finally caused me to quit denying who I am,” he said in an e-mail to friends and colleagues asking them to encourage Congress members to vote for the bill. “No one should be fearful of physical or emotional violence directed at him or her because he or she is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or questioning.”
Conservative Christian leaders have also accused the bill of being the first step on a slippery slope toward “thought crimes” laws.
Focus on the Family founder and radio broadcaster James Dobson, in a message urging supporters to sign a petition against the bill, said the law would be “the first step to criminalize our rights as Christians to believe that some behaviors are sinful.”
He added, “Pastors preaching from Scripture on homosexuality could be threatened with persecution and prosecution.”
However, bill supporters noted, H.R. 1529 deals only with violent crimes. It also explicitly contains a provision that says nothing in the bill should “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.”
The bill now goes to the Senate, where supporters say they have the votes for passage. Both chambers have approved similar bills at separate times before, but no version has made its way to President Bush's desk.
Besides gay-rights organizations and other civil-rights groups, the bill has the support of a wide array of law-enforcement associations and the attorneys general of 31 states.
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Read more:
Analysis: Change in Congress portends different set of social controversies (12/19/2006)
House adds sexual orientation to hate-crimes protections (9/16/2005)
Senate adds sexual-orientation protections to Department of Defense appropriation (6/16/2004)