It is now a federal crime to assault an individual because of his or her sexual orientation or gender.
On Wednesday, President Obama signed into existence a newly expanded federal hate crimes law, hailed by supporters as the first major federal gay rights legislation. The new law was named for Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming teenager who was kidnapped and severely beaten to death in October 1998, and for James Byrd Jr., an African-American man dragged to death behind a pick-up truck in Texas the same year.
Amid reports of 12,000 crimes based on sexual orientation over the past 10 years, Mr. Obama called the bill another step in the continuing struggle for protecting human rights, and a major step toward change to “help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, who they are.” In front of a packed White House ceremony which included the Shepard and Byrd families, the President said “Because of the efforts of the folks in this room, particularly those family members standing behind me, the bell rings even louder now.” When he finished his remarks, he hugged the weeping relatives as the audience applauded. “Today I’m pleased to say that we have proved that change is possible.”
This made me cry. I am happy and speechless all at the same time!THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU PRESIDENT OBAMA!!
Well done! Well done indeed!
Andrew Sullivan opposes “Hate Crimes” laws because he strongly feels they could lead to the unintended consequence of doing more harm than good. As he recently expressed on his blogsite, his thoughts on the matter have not changed since writing an essay about it in Sept. 1999.Excerpt: What’s So Bad About HateDo we not owe something more to the victims of hate? Perhaps we do. But it is also true that there is nothing that government can do for the hated that the hated cannot better do for themselves. After all, most bigots are not foiled when they are punished specifically for their beliefs. In fact, many of the worst haters crave such attention and find vindication in such rebukes. Indeed, our media's obsession with "hate," our elevation of it above other social misdemeanors and crimes, may even play into the hands of the pathetic and the evil, may breathe air into the smoldering embers of their paranoid loathing. Sure, we can help create a climate in which such hate is disapproved of — and we should. But there is a danger that if we go too far, if we punish it too much, if we try to abolish it altogether, we may merely increase its mystique, and entrench the very categories of human difference that we are trying to erase. For hate is only foiled not when the haters are punished but when the hated are immune to the bigot's power. A hater cannot psychologically wound if a victim cannot psychologically be wounded. And that immunity to hurt can never be given; it can merely be achieved………For all our rhetoric, hate will never be destroyed. Hate, as our predecessors knew better, can merely be overcome. Complete Essay: http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/1999…