Today The House voted 281 to 146 to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to cover those committed because of a victim’s gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, according to the New York Times. This comes at the 11 year anniversary of the day that Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student was brutally murdered in 1998.
“Left unchecked crimes of this kind threaten to ruin the very fabric of America,” said Representative Susan Davis, D-California, the New York Times reported.
The vote raised a heated debate among Republicans, who said that the Democrats were forcing the hate crimes provision by tying it to a popular Pentagon measure that includes authorizing military pay, benefits, weapons programs and other essentials for the armed forces.
“We believe this is a poison pill, poisonous enough that we refuse to be blackmailed into voting for a piece of social agenda that has no place in this bill,” said Representative Todd Akin of Missouri.
The final Pentagon measure will still need to be approved by the Senate, but many believe that the hate crimes provision will have support there. Senator John McCain of Arizona, senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said the contents of the overall measure outweighed his own objections to including the hate crimes provision, the New York Times reported.
In October of 1998, the world was stunned when Matthew Shepherd a Laramie, Wyoming college student, was kidnapped, tied to a fence post, beaten and left for dead. Matthew Shepherd was killed for being gay. Several weeks later, New York City based Tectonics Theatre Company traveled to Laramie to interview townspeople, which was eventually used as the material for the award-winning off Broadway play and HBO movie called the “The Laramie Project.”
Many states have been trying to pass non-discrimination laws that would include gays, but many states, including Utah and Wyoming who refuse to pass it.
Sources: The Florida Blade, The Daily KOS, and the New York Times.
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