Gay rights activists around the country are applauding President Obama's efforts of bringing Federal protection to the homosexual, bisexual, and transgender community. On October 28, the president signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was brought along as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010. The new law expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
Many equal-rights activists in Los Angeles are happy about the bill's passage, and see Obama as a strong civil rights leader now more than ever. However, some right-wing religious groups criticize the new expansion to the hate-crimes and see the law as an attempt to silence religion.
James Dobson, founder of the socially conservative lobbying group Focus on the Family, publicly expressed opposition to the Act when it was first passed in the The House of Representatives back in 2007. He said that the purpose of such a law is "to muzzle people of faith who dare to express their moral and biblical concerns about homosexuality," according to The New York Times.
In addition to the inclusion of homosexuals in hate crimes, the law also provides $5 million per year to help state and local agencies pay for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. The law also requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to track statistics on hate crimes against transgender people, a group that the FBI has not tracked before.
Los Angeles criminal defense attorneys see the new addition to the federal hate-crime law as significant at the national level and to federal law. This is because when a criminal act is labeled as a hate-crime, it sheds light on injustice and can develop into an advancement of acceptance, understanding, and equality of a group that has had a dark history of intolerance.
- Hate Crimes Defense for Sexual Orientation Becomes Law (The Legal Beat)
- Expanded Hate Crimes Definition: What is Covered? (FindLaw Blotter)
- Hate Crime: The Violence of Intolerance (FindLaw)
ShareThis
