By http://www.365gay.com/04.29.2009 5:24pm EDT
(Washington) The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of categories covered under federal hate crime law.
The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act for the 21-year-old college student who was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Wyoming in October 1998, would provide local police and sheriff’s departments with federal resources to combat hate violence.
“No one should face violence simply because of who they are,” said Judy Shepard, executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation. “This bill is a critical step to erasing the hate that has devastated far too many families.”
Wednesday morning, just hours before the vote, President Obama urged Congress to pass the bill.
” I urge members on both sides of the aisle to act on this important civil rights issue by passing this legislation to protect all of our citizens from violent acts of intolerance – legislation that will enhance civil rights protections, while also protecting our freedom of speech and association,” the President said in a statement.
” I also urge the Senate to work with my Administration to finalize this bill and to take swift action.”
During debate on the bill, prior to the vote, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) alleged that it was a “hoax” that the slaying of Matthew Shepard’s had anything to do with him being gay.
“That young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery, it wasn’t because he was gay,” said Foxx.
The Senate version of the bill was filed this week by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). It still needs to go to committee before being voted on in the full Senate.
Gay rights groups have been fighting to have the legislation passed for over a decade.
The legislation passed the House in 2007 but President Bush threatened to veto it if it passed in the Senate.
In an effort to get around a veto the Senate version was tied to the 2008 defense authorization bill. It passed, but then was stripped out in conference.
Because there is no federal law mandating states and municipalities to report hate crimes, they are often under-reported. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s own statistics, based on voluntary reporting, show that since 1991 over 100,000 hate crime offenses have been reported to the FBI, with 7,624 reported in 2007, the FBI’s most recent reporting period.
Violent crimes based on sexual orientation constituted 16.6 percent of all hate crimes in 2007, with 1,265 reported for the year. In addition, while not captured in the federal statistics, transgender Americans too often live in fear of violence.
