President Obama Signs Hate Crimes Act Today
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was signed by President Obama in a White House ceremony today. This new law is an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill, which will be signed in a separate event to day. This long needed law (and one promised by the Obama campaign):
…makes it a federal crime to assault someone because of their sexual orientation, disability or gender identity. It is named for the victims of two horrific crimes in 1998: Matthew Shepard, a gay teenager from Wyoming who was beaten to death; and James Byrd. Jr., a black man from Texas who was tied to a pick-up track and dragged to death.
Prior to the signing, there was march on the White House by activists as well as parents and friends of gays and lesbians. They carried photos of hate crime murder victims (including Matthew Shepard and Harvey Milk) to remind people that since Matthew Shepard was murdered (1998), there have been more than 16,000 hate crime victims across the country.
Tags: LGBT, President Obama
Oh man, now we’re going to have to read right-wing comments that Matthew Shepard’s murder wasn’t a hate crime.
What does it have to do with defense appropriations?
Mike Protack
Well, about as much as Sen. Lamar Alexander’s amendment to the healthcare bill that would “establish an auto advisory council to make recommendations to the Secretary of the Treasury regarding how best to represent the taxpayers of the United States as the majority owner of General Motors.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2223023/
Surely you are not criticizing Democrats or President Obama for something your Republicans do frequently, are you? And if so, please tell me where your criticism is of your own party?
Good news!
It is bad news but par for the course of this adminitstration. I hate the socialist/secular slide of this country. Everyone should be protected under law and were before this bill passed. No one is safer, but it gives government an excuse to try to indoctrinate school children and others to help them avoid hatred.
Now he’s gone from commie-lib to socialist/secular. Correct me if I am wrong, but the last time I checked, socialist and secular were not interchangeable. If you think they are, well, Mr Ultra-Conservativo, I can tell you quite a handful of staunch capitalists who are also quite secular. Heck, one only needs to hang on Wall St during lunch hour for quite a few to pass ’em on by. Keep going for the disdainful adjectives without saying ‘hate’.
I hate the socialist/secular slide of this country…
Ooo, missed that one. My bad.
Sorry, David, but this approach is terribly divisive and seriously has an air of true hatred. Why?
gives government an excuse to try to indoctrinate school children and others to help them avoid hatred.
When did helping people to avoid hatred get to be a bad thing?
In many ways, Delusional David has pretty much spilled the beans on why his tribe were so set against this thing — got to preserve those few opportunities left to exercise that bigotry and hatred, huh?
Why, to poke fun at the nature of the legislation. You can not ban hatred. When you try to you end up creating prejudice and oppression of ideas not cleared by the ruling regime. Hatred becomes not agreeing with the government.
The law does not ban hatred. It only provides a way to prosecute people who hurt others solely because of it.
But I can see that convoluted rationalization as about the only way that you can still hold on to your own bigotries and hatred.
David, beating people up isn’t an issue of free speech.
The reason this is, and had to be, a federal bill, is that there are isolated pockets where people think it’s okay to hurt another citizen if you have a “good reason” for it. I seriously doubt anyone reading or commenting here believes that’s okay. It’s certainly not a libertarian point of view.
In fact, the Hate Crimes bill is designed to protect citizens, ALL citizens, against the misbehavior of local governments, by providing a federal recourse for victims of crime that may be winked at by local authorities, AND to back up local law enforcement who can do their jobs secure in the knowledge that political pressures from community bigotry will be countered by a federal response. Just the threat of that generally helps keep people on the up and up.
I don’t know what everyone else was doing when Matthew Shepard was killed. By that time I had been talking to victims of hate crimes for 20 years. That should never have been possible.
The thing about this bill isn’t so much about prosecutions — hate crime prosecutions at the Federal level are pretty rare and they will continue to be (most of them happen locally). The real value of this bill is that it allows a local jurisdiction to get help from the Feds for investigation and prosecution resources, meaning that the locals will be able to actually do their jobs better.
To answer Mike Protack’s question:
“What does it have to do with defense(sic) appropriations?”
An anti-hate crime rider perfumes the stench of a war crime appropriation bill.
Dumbass David – have you ever been physically assaulted because of your religion? I have. Have you ever been physically and verbally assaulted because of your sexual orientation? I have, as recently as this past January at work. There doesn’t seem to be a weekend when I’m walking down Rehoboth Avenue and some schmuck decides to yell “faggot” out his window.
Again, you pull out the “he’s leading us to socialism” card and I’m calling you on your bullshit. You would do all of us a huge favor by just STFU.
Notice how David has turned up his rhetoric? A sign of desperation.
David and his bigoted friends just love to beat down the gays, and it is their God-given right to beat down the gays, because their God tells them that gays are an abomination, and that it is holy to hate those different from you.
David and his bigoted friends have not read the New Testament yet, it seems.
supposedly non-secular folks say dumb stuff like “but it gives government an excuse to try to indoctrinate school children and others to help them avoid hatred.” apparently oblivious to the New Testament that, you know, tries to indoctrinate children and others to help them avoid hatred.
FANtastic! Fags, Dikes and Drag Queens now get special protection. I feel better already.
FANtastic! Fags, Dikes and Drag Queens now get special protection.
And not a moment too soon, apparently.
Special protection? They are already dead after some bigot like Padrick here killed them because of who they were. It is not special protection. It is special punishment. If you kill someone simply because you hate who they are, that is a hate crime and you will be punished accordingly.
Now, now. Bigots like Padrick don’t kill people. They just laugh and snicker while other bigots kill people.
Padrick – it’s dyke, not dike. What a dumbass. Can’t even spell the slur correctly.
“No one is safer, but it gives government an excuse to try to indoctrinate school children and others to help them avoid hatred.”
Oh please – you make it sound like avoiding hate is a bad thing. And the only people trying to intoctrinates anybody are those rightwing “christians” (you know, the ones that call into the downstate radio station) that want to indoctrinate my kid by wanting prayers in schools.
“hate crime murder victims (including Matthew Shepard and Harvey Milk)”
except Milk was killed by an unbalanced political allie
and
ABC’s “20/20” investigation in 2004 found that drugs fueled Shepard’s brutal murder, not homophobia, as is widely believed.
nevermind his murderers admitted their intentions and claimed “gay panic” no, we are going to cherry pick “facts” to justify the vile black hatred in our hearts.
You just cant admit that you are evil, and rejoice when someone we hate gets killed, so we try and write it off as something else…. because you are all good moral people (probably christian…. ironically one of the most hate filled religions ever to exist)
lizard, padrick, david…. go to hell.
and to clear up misunderstandings…. i dont find Christianity evil and hate filled and violent…. just what people like many republicans and conservatives have done to christianity.