Homosexuals Receive Federal Protections

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Homosexuals Receive Federal Protections

Special Report - October 29, 2009
Yesterday, President Barack Obama signed historic legislation to expand the federal hate crimes law to include special protections for homosexual and transgendered indviduals as a part of the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.” During the late stages of the legislative process, the “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act” was added to the $680 billion military spending measure after failing to receive enough Congressional support to pass as a stand-alone bill.

Federal law has defined hate crimes as violent crimes committed on the basis of race and religion since 1968. The new provision defines a hate crime as being “motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim.” The provision also authorizes the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute such crimes when state or local jurisdictions are unable or unwilling to do so. Congress allocated $5 million to the Justice Department for each of the next three years to fund these activities.

According to the FBI’s most recent statistics, less than one-tenth of one-percent of violent and property crimes committed in the U.S. in 2007 were classified as hate crimes. While 16 percent of those hate crimes were considered to be motivated by the sexual orientation of the victim, these specific hate crimes comprised 0.012 percent of the violent and property crimes committed in the country. Since 2003, North Carolina has reported 10 hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation each year, except in 2006 when nine such crimes were reported.

The passage of the “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act” represents a significant victory for homosexual activists, who have been working for decades to have sexual orientation added to the protected categories under federal hate crimes laws. In a statement, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) called its passage, “a historic milestone in the inevitable march towards equality.”

Opponents of expanding the hate crimes provision argued that it threatens the First Amendment rights of citizens, particularly clergy, to publicly condemn homosexuality. Hate crimes are also considered difficult to prosecute because they depend on a determination of the perpetrator’s thoughts. Hate crimes legislation “paves the way for the criminalization of speech that is not deemed politically correct,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, in a press release. “All violent crimes are hate crimes, and all crime victims deserve equal justice. This law is a grave threat to the First Amendment because it provides special penalties based on what people think, feel, or believe.”