Senate Passes Matthew Shepard Act

Woot!

The Senate today ... voted to approve the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (also known as the Matthew Shepard Act) by a vote of 68-29, sending the first civil rights legislation protecting gays and lesbians to President Obama for his signature. The bill was attached to a Defense Department appropriations bill.

Earlier in the day the chamber took a cloture vote (to end debate and filibuster) of 64-35 to move the bill forward.

The Matthew Shepard Act expands the existing federal hate-crime law, passed in 1969, which covers race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, and sex, to include increased penalties for crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or disability.

Reportedly, Obama will sign the bill early next week; I imagine that's so Judy Shepard, Matthew's mother, has time to fly to D.C. for the signing.

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Note: One of the most frequent talking points you hear in opposition to hate crimes legislation is that giving specific consideration to crimes committed against people on the basis of some specific part(s) of their identity amounts to "special rights" and some kind of preferential treatment. If you hear this in the next few days and need a way to explain why hate crimes legislation is necessary, here it is: The prosecution of hate crimes requires special consideration because when someone is targeted for hir race, nationality, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and/or religion, it has the potential to affect everyone who shares that identity across the entire nation.

A whole community isn't suddenly considered unsafe when a husband murders his wife, because we recognize the difference between domestic violence and community violence. That murder wasn't random; it was specific. The victim was chosen for a reason. It doesn't make the crime any less horrific, but it doesn't cause reverberating fear through the community. It stops with that murderer and that victim.

Hate crimes are the opposite of that; we recognize that when someone is targeted just because zie is black, for example, that can make all black Americans feel that much less safe, irrespective of the safety of their physical community, because their race community has been attacked. In a hate crime, it doesn't matter which person of color/gay person/trans person/woman/Jew/quadriplegic had been there; it's so nonspecific that it inevitably reverberates. Suddenly people of color/gays/trans people/women/Jews/quadriplegics are staying indoors a little more, feeling a little less able to go out after dark alone...lives of people not directly touched by the crime are affected—and that's why hate crimes legislation is needed, so that freedom can be equally experienced by everyone.