The Matthew Shepard Act passed!
Sep. 27th, 2007 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nenya_kanadkaFrom the Matthew Shepard Foundation homepage:
The legislation is formally entitled, the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 1105). It was offered as a bipartisan amendment by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) to the Department of Defense authorization bill currently before the U.S. Senate. The virtually identical House version of the bill passed overwhelmingly on May 3rd, 2007 with a bipartisan vote of 237 to 180 as an appropriate and measured response to the unrelenting and under-addressed problem of hates crimes against individuals based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.
Current federal hate crimes law permits the federal prosecution of a hate crime only if the hate crime was motivated by bias based on race, color, religion, or national origin and the assailant intends to prevent the victim from exercising a "federally protected right" such as the right to vote or attend school. If this legislation is signed by the president, the law will be expanded to protect the GLBT community as well as remove the restrictions on what type of acts can be considered applicable under hate crime law.
Woohoo!
--although I wonder if the President will try to get out of signing it?
The legislation is formally entitled, the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 1105). It was offered as a bipartisan amendment by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) to the Department of Defense authorization bill currently before the U.S. Senate. The virtually identical House version of the bill passed overwhelmingly on May 3rd, 2007 with a bipartisan vote of 237 to 180 as an appropriate and measured response to the unrelenting and under-addressed problem of hates crimes against individuals based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.
Current federal hate crimes law permits the federal prosecution of a hate crime only if the hate crime was motivated by bias based on race, color, religion, or national origin and the assailant intends to prevent the victim from exercising a "federally protected right" such as the right to vote or attend school. If this legislation is signed by the president, the law will be expanded to protect the GLBT community as well as remove the restrictions on what type of acts can be considered applicable under hate crime law.
Woohoo!
--although I wonder if the President will try to get out of signing it?
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Date: 2007-09-28 04:40 pm (UTC)Why that is such a bad thing, I don't know. It's not as if you get hit by it if you just don't like blacks or gays or whatever, it only catches you if you would act on that dislike. And to have crimestop wrt hurting people because they are different is not such a very bad thing at all...I think.