The Senate has attached hate crime legislation to a Pentagon spending bill in an effort to get it passed, with both Tennessee senators voting against the bill.
Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker both voted "no" on the legislation, which must move through a conference committe and faces a presidential veto.
The measure would expand the category of hate crimes to include violent attacks on gays, to include bias motivated violence based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, and disability, and provides new resources and tools to assist local law enforcement in prosecuting vicious crimes. The White House says that's already covered by state and local laws.
Local equality leader Chris Sanders said he was pleased to see the legislation move through the Senate.
"We (TEP) were happy to cooperate with the Human Rights Campaign in urging Tennessee voters to contact their Senators," Sanders, president of the Tennessee Equality Project, said. "We are pleased with the result so far, but we have more work to do to get our own Senators on board for future legislation."
"For over a decade our community has worked tirelessly to ensure protections to combat violence motivated by hate and today we are the closest we have ever been to seeing that become a reality," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. "Congress has taken an historic step forward and moved our country closer to the realization that all Americans, including the GLBT community, are part of the fabric of our nation. The new leadership in Congress fully understands that for too long our community has been terrorized by hate violence. And today, the US Senate has sent a clear message to every corner of our country that we will no longer turn a blind eye to anti-gay violence in America."
The Senate in a bipartisan vote of 60 to 39 accepted cloture which ended debate on the bill and then moved to approve the Matthew Shepard Act by a voice vote -- attaching it as an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2008 Department of Defense Authorization bill.
According to the FBI, 25 Americans each day are victims of hate crimes–that means approximately one hate crime is committed every hour. One in six hate crimes are motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation.
On May 3rd, the House of Representatives passed a companion bill, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (H.R. 1592), with a strong bipartisan margin of 237 to 180. Twenty-six state Attorneys General, including 23 from states with anti-hate crimes laws already on the books, as well as 230 law enforcement, civil rights, civic and religious organizations support the Matthew Shepard Act and the LLEHCPA because, despite progress toward equality in almost all segments of our society, hate crimes continue to spread fear and violence and local law enforcement often lack the tools and resources to prevent and prosecute them.
Some of these supporting organizations include the National Sheriffs Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, 26 state attorneys general, the National District Attorneys Association, the NAACP, the Episcopal Church, the League of Women Voters, the Anti-Defamation League, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the YWCA of the USA and the United Methodist Church.
