The Colorado Independent » Matthew Shepard Act

Hate crimes amendment scheduled for vote; Christian groups oppose law as ‘utter evil’

John Tomasic — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:28:06 +0000

** Updated**

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed the House by a wide margin in the spring. Debate included a rousing short speech by Democratic U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, who referenced the fact that Shepard died at the Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, in her 4th District. Shepard had been attacked in Wyoming, tied up and beaten because he was gay.

The act is up for vote today in the Senate, an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act. The Hate Crimes law seeks to prosecute crimes committed against people due to their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. Christian groups, including James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, vehemently oppose the Act. Dobson called it an “utter evil.”

The groups oppose the new law for the way it might trammel or chill their right to free expression. That is, they want to be able to hold forth freely in opposition to homosexuality without fear that they might later be tied to criminal acts against gay people.

There is also threading through the opposition a fear that the Act legitimizes sexual practice and “lifestyle choices” that the Christian leaders do not condone as an article of their faith. The idea in particular that the Shepard Act seeks to extend protections from violence to pedophiles, disturbs the Act’s opponents.

On Dobson’s radio show in May:

According to [Congressmen Louie Gohmert, R-Texas] if a religious leader teaches “that homosexuality is wrong and someone goes out and commits a crime of violence then [the religious leader] can be arrested for inducing that person to do it and under existing Federal Law you are as guilty as the one who committed the act of violence.”

Dobson then quipped in response, “So much for the 1st amendment.”

Dobson also expressed his concern that, “The broad definition [of sexual orientation] could mean anything including the 30 forms of sexual deviancy that are listed by the American Psychiatric Association.”

From Christian LifesiteNews yesterday:

In addition the House version of the bill, titled the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act, was met with alarm by conservative lawmakers after the House Judiciary Committee refused an amendment proposed by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to specifically exclude pedophiles from the protection.

As the committee had also refused to define or restrict the definition of the term “sexual orientation,” one Democrat representative lauded the bill as granting heightened federal protection for all of the 547 “paraphilias” or sexual aberrations documented by the American Psychological Association.

In the House debate, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) urged passage of the bill with the understanding it would grant all known sexual fetishes heightened federal protection.

“This bill addresses our resolve to end violence based on prejudice and to guarantee that all Americans regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, or – (Hastings here lifted a several-page document) – all of these ‘-philias’ and fetishes and ‘-isms’ that were put forward, need not live in fear because of who they are.”

Currently the term “sexual orientation” is not defined in the hate crimes bill, and is only defined in one law in the books, a law that is not referenced in the bill. Gohmert said that when a judge is trying to figure out how to define a term that is not defined in the law and does not reference another law, the judge gives the term the plain meaning.

“Some judge is going to finally say, ‘Sexual orientation’ means exactly what the words say: it is whatever you are oriented toward sexually.”

Congressman [Steve King, R-Iowa], in attempting to pre-empt this catch-all definition of “sexual orientation,” proposed an amendment that would prevent pedophiles from being protected under H.R.1913. Pedophilia is one of the “sexual orientations” listed by the American Psychiatry Association. The amendment, however, was rejected. “We have a record roll-call vote that shows every Democrat on the judiciary committee voting to have pedophiles protected under sexual orientation,” said King.

But, as the Colorado Independent reported in May, assertions that the Act would protect pedophiles under the category of a sexual orientation were roundly dismissed as preposterous by legal and criminology analysts quoted at the Pulitizer Prize-winning PolitiFact.com, a project of the St. Petersburg Times. The site awarded the claim its special “Pants on Fire” designation, reserved for lies so outrageous there isn’t a shred of truth to be found.

The opponents’ arguments display a fundamental misunderstanding of the words “sexual orientation,” said Arthur Leonard, a professor of law at New York Law School and an expert in gay rights and discrimination based on sexual orientation. …

“There are no cases, zero, at the federal or state level that even remotely resemble what Rep. King and other opponents have talked about,” [Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League] said. “It’s make-believe.”

“It’s laughable,” said Jack Levin, professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University and co-chair of the Center on Violence and Conflict. “Why should it happen at the federal level when it hasn’t happened at the state level. They are setting up a straw man…It’s a convenient way of arousing public fear about something that is quite benign.”

So we’ve found nothing to support the opponents

Pro-gun gay groups take aim at hate crimes bill

David Weigel — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:31:09 +0000

(Image/pinkpistols.org)

One month after successfully tucking an amendment into the credit card reform bill that expanded gun rights, a small number of Senate Republicans are looking at the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as another chance to score a victory for the Second Amendment.

The plan — to add an amendment that would allow gun owners to carry their weapons from one state to another in accordance with concealed carry laws. The possible rationale — to defend gay rights.

“It makes sense for a group of people who would be protected by hate crime legislation to support something that would let them defend themselves before or after the crime,” said one Republican Senate aid familiar with the discussions. “It’s relevant, and we want to work together with gay groups to get the message out.”

While the aide described the discussions over a gun rights amendment to the hate crimes bill as “very fluid,” conservative and pro-gun rights gay groups outside of the Senate are ready to make a real push for it. GOProud, a new gay rights group that broke away from the Log Cabin Republicans in April, has talked with top staffers for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., about how to make the civil rights case for conceal and carry reciprocity.

“We support this because we think it’s advantageous to make it legal and relatively easy for gay people to arm themselves so they can protect themselves,” said Jimmy LaSilva, who became the executive director of GOProud after three years working on policy for the Log Cabin Republicans. “In the next few weeks we want to start highlighting some of those stories. There are people who have averted gay bashings because of their ability to use guns.”

LaSilva and GOProud are currently putting together the names of some of those people. They’re collecting their statements for the first rock-solid deadline in the push for concealed carry reciprocity — a June 23 hearing that came together as a result of a previous Thune gun rights bill. In February, Thune and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., offered similar amendments to legislation that would extend a vote in Congress to residents of Washington, D.C. Both amendments would have legalized gun ownership in the district. Ensign’s passed, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., approached Thune on the floor to offer a hearing on conceal and carry reciprocity instead of a protracted fight on his D.C. gun rights amendment.

“Everyone here is focused on that hearing,” said Kyle Downey, a spokesman for Thune. “It’s too early to talk about the chances of this as a separate bill or as an amendment, but getting the commitment from Leahy on a hearing was quite a victory in and of itself.”

The hate crimes bill was sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and is supported by a range of minority rights groups. The senator’s office and the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign did not comment on this potential amendment when contacted by The Washington Independent.

Liberal opponents of Coburn and other Republicans criticized last month’s amendment to the credit card bill that legalized the possession of loaded weapons in national parks. The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups pushed back hard against the argument that Coburn’s amendment had been irrelevant, or that it had been passed as a trick. At the time, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence called the amendment “reckless and extraneous,” while NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre argued that the vote was bipartisan and proved “there is broad and bipartisan support for the Second Amendment in Congress.”

Supporters of concealed carry reciprocity argue that the case for attaching it to a hate crimes bill — if that is the way that it can be passed — makes even more sense than the case for Coburn’s amendment. “Plenty of people have used guns to defend innocent people,” argued attorney and Second Amendment scholar David Kopel of the Golden-based Independence Institute, “including crimes motivated by bias. This is a legitimate thing to attach to any bill that’s concerned with violent crime.”

That’s the case being made by Pink Pistols, a gay gun rights organization whose slogan is “Armed Gays Don’t Get Bashed,” and whose members can recount stories of fending off potential attackers by brandishing their weapons.

“Self-defense with a firearm is a valid and viable method of self-defense and protection,” said Gwen Patton, a spokesperson for Pink Pistols. “Imagine that individuals follow you from a place known in the neighborhood as a GLBT gathering place. They follow you to your car, and when you try to open the door, they hold out pipes and yell — ‘Hey, faggot!’ You pull out a concealed weapon that you have a license to carry. They say, ‘He’s got a gun!’ They drop their pipes and run away. No shots were fired, but a beating was just averted.”

Still, it’s not yet clear whether Thune and his allies will have to go this route to pass concealed carry legislation. It’s still possible that a new hate crimes law will be be folded into the defense authorization for 2009, which would effectively remove it from the amendment process. Thune’s most recent version of the legislation, S. 845, still could be introduced on its own for an up-or-down vote. But only one Democrat, Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, has co-sponsored the bill, and Thune’s spokesman Downey worried that “the political side” of the Democratic Party would keep it from coming to a vote. “As we get closer to the election,” said Downey, “they will want to avoid these types of tough votes.”

If they do go the amendment route, supporters of concealed carry reciprocity are confident that it would be passed as part of a hate crimes bill, and not become a poison pill that kills the entire package. “Every Republican senator is on the record with a position on hate crimes legislation,” said GOProud’s LaSilvia. “If this were to be attached, a vote for the bill could be explained as a vote for concealed carry. Gosh — what would happen when the Family Research Council realized that their people were voting for the ‘gay bill.’ It would put a bunch of people in a really weird position. It would be fun to watch.”

Dobson’s claim hate-crime laws would protect pedophiles a ‘Pants on Fire’ lie

Ernest Luning — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:05:51 +0000

It didn’t work to call Matthew Shepard’s murder “a hoax,” so opponents of federal hate-crimes legislation are trying a new tactic: claiming the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which adds sexual orientation and gender identity to federal anti-bias laws, would protect pedophilia and a host of other deviancies, including necrophilia, incest and urophilia (don’t ask).

Hogwash, says the Pulitzer-prize winning PolitiFact.com site, a project of the St. Petersburg Times. The site awarded the claim its special “Pants on Fire” designation, reserved for lies so outrageous there isn’t a shred of truth to be found.

The claim hate-crime laws will protect pedophiles — most notably raised by U.S. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, during debate on the measure in Congress — was resurrected last week by Focus on the Family honcho James Dobson in a radio broadcast that included King and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican.

Speaking against the federal hate-crimes bill last month, Gohmert made the intriguing argument that fending off a sexual assault could incur federal charges.

“If a mother hears that their child has been raped and she slaps the assailant with her purse, she is now gone after as a hate criminal because this is a protected class,” Gohmert opined in debate on the bill, which passed the House 249-175 and is now in the Senate.

Somehow believing the modern urban woman’s weapon of choice is the purse, Gohmert goes on:

I have female friends who have told me over the years that some guy flashed them and their immediate reaction was to hit them with the purse. Well, now, he’s committed a misdemeanor. She has committed a federal hate crime because the exhibitionism is protected under sexual orientation.

Not one to leave daft legal theories to his guests, Dobson frets over the perverts who could be protected by the bill.

“In its broad definition, [sexual orientation] could mean anything, including any of the 30 forms of sexual deviancy which are listed by the American Psychiatric Association,” Dobson says, and then goes on to squeamishly enumerate some of the forms.

(Is Dobson getting soft in his retirement? Not usually one to pull his punches, the good doctor falls short of invoking “all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or ‘paraphilias’ listed by the American Psychiatric Association” scarily touted by serious opponents to the bill.)

Media Matters posted this clip of Dobson’s warning:

“It seemingly protects every kind of perversion,” Dobson says. Well, only if you believe words have no meaning.

Let’s check back in with PolitiFact.com on the fears Dobson expressed:

The opponents’ arguments display a fundamental misunderstanding of the words “sexual orientation,” said Arthur Leonard, a professor of law at New York Law School and an expert in gay rights and discrimination based on sexual orientation. …

Leonard believes it is an attempt by legislators to appeal to their constituents’ “yahoo mentality.”

“Yahoo mentality”? That’s harsh. But there’s more:

“There are no cases, zero, at the federal or state level that even remotely resemble what Rep. King and other opponents have talked about,” [Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League] said. “It’s make-believe.”

“It’s laughable,” said Jack Levin, professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University and co-chair of the Center on Violence and Conflict. “Why should it happen at the federal level when it hasn’t happened at the state level. They are setting up a straw man…It’s a convenient way of arousing public fear about something that is quite benign.”

Make-believe? Laughable? But what about slapping a perp with a purse? Isn’t there any foundation for the paraphilia = sexual orientation scare tactics?

So we’ve found nothing to support the opponents’ claims that pedophiles would be protected by the hate crimes bill. The experience of 31 states that have similar laws, the FBI’s definition of sexual orientation and the opinions of legal experts have persuaded us not only that the opponents are wrong, but that their arguments are preposterous. We find King’s claim to be Pants on Fire.

Apparently not.

Coffman bucks GOP caucus, votes for hate crime law

Wendy Norris — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:05:01 +0000

District Six Republican Rep. Mike Coffman joined the entire Colorado Democratic delegation and 17 GOP colleagues in a rare moment on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday — a bipartisan vote on a controversial issue among conservative activists.

Coffman was apparently, and thankfully, not swayed by the disgraceful remarks of North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx that activists perpetrated a gay hate crime “hoax” to garner sympathy for Matthew Shepard’s brutal 1999 slaying in Laramie, Wyo.

The Centennial congressman has not issued a formal statement on the vote nor has his office commemorated it with a floor speech video yet. But a tip ‘o the hat is deserved for Coffman doing the right thing in memory of Shepard, who died in a Fort Collins hospital, and 2008 Greeley murder victim Angie Zapata whose killer was convicted on state hate crime charges last week.

Hate-crimes prosecution could yield ‘mixed bag’ for Senate candidate Buck

Ernest Luning — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:40:41 +0000

Weld County District Attorney and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck, right, talks politics at the state GOP meeting March 21 in Castle Rock. (Photo/Ernest Luning)

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck’s landmark hate-crime prosecution of a man accused of murdering a transgender Greeley teen could prove “very much a mixed bag” for the Republican, who emerged Tuesday as a candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate election.

That’s according to a political analyst who predicts the “hot button issue” of hate crimes could become contentious as Republicans vie for the nomination to challenge appointed Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

“There’s such a significant constituency of Republican activists who do regard these issues as [the] holy grail,” said Eric Sondermann, an analyst with public affairs and media consultants SE2. “It’s hard to take an attitude of ‘let’s agree to disagree.’ ”

Buck filed first-degree murder and hate-crime charges against Allen Andrade, the Thornton man convicted by a Greeley jury in the brutal beating death last summer of Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman. It was the first time Colorado’s 2005 bias-motivated, or hate-crime, law has been prosecuted in the murder of a transgender victim and one of the first prosecutions in the nation of hate-crime laws against an accused killer of a transgender woman.

“Initially, I was skeptical about the use of the bias-motivated crimes statute,” Buck wrote in an opinion article in Sunday’s Denver Post. “Through my exposure to the Zapata case, I was persuaded that these crimes are unique. Bias-motivated crimes are particularly heinous because they target an entire community of people, not just the actual victim.”

That’s by no means a popular position among national Republicans, as evidenced by the vigorous debate Wednesday over a bill to add sexual orientation and transgender status to federal hate-crime law. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, or the Matthew Shepard Act, passed the U.S. House of Representatives on a 249-175 vote and heads to the Senate.

“It’s very much a mixed bag for Ken Buck,” Sondermann said. “The good news for Buck is the trial put him front-and-center, and he won. And there’s nothing like prevailing in a high-profile murder case.

“The bad news is, hate crimes, as a category of law, is very questionable and is particularly controversial among a lot of Republican audiences and particularly among some Republican intellectuals.”

One local conservative intellectual, Independence Institute researcher David Kopel, doesn’t think the Andrade prosecution will pose a problem for GOP activists when it comes to supporting Buck for the Senate nomination. “When prosecutors win a high-profile criminal conviction, it tends to be a positive thing for them politically,” said Kopel, who authored a 2003 argument against hate-crime laws, titled Hate Crime Laws: Dangerous and Divisive.

“Regardless of what a person thinks of the underlying hate-crime statute, you had a vicious murder here, which [Buck] proved to the jury was not a heated thing,” Kopel said. “Those who believe in law and order and civil liberties would have to say Ken Buck did a very good job.”

Kopel questioned whether hate-crimes statutes are as divisive as some think. Hate-crime laws are “not an issue on which I see a lot of party unity,” he said.

It’s that disunity that could work against Buck, according to Sondermann. “Being the first successful prosecutor of that case puts [Buck] in the middle of that dialogue, and I’m not sure that’s where he wants to be.

“What’s problematic for the party as a whole,” Sondermann said, “is if you have Ken Buck as the successful hate-crime prosecutor, and you have Ryan Frazier with his own independent viewpoint, it puts this whole issue back in play in the middle of the Republican Party.”

Frazier, an Aurora city councilman with his toe in the water for a Senate run, has broken with the party line over gay-rights questions, first as a vocal proponent of a 2006 statewide domestic-partnership ballot initiative and then when he came out early in favor of adding health benefits for same-sex partners of city employees.

It’s the prospect of a third, more socially conservative candidate, that could exploit Buck and Frazier’s unorthodox positions in a bid for the ideological core of Republican voters and “risks making this again prominent,” Sondermann said.

That candidate could be conservative radio talk show host Dan Caplis, who has been publicly weighing a bid for Bennet’s seat. “Caplis’s natural constituency is going to be the social conservative,” Sondermann observed. “There are forces that would pull this thing down to the lowest common denominator.”

“The Republican Party is a large party with a lot of different people in it,” Kopel said, noting that the “gay-rights issue is not as important as others” when it comes to deciding whether a politician is a solid Republican.

“Caplis has also made the point that he’s for preserving the traditional definition of marriage, he’s not anti-gay,” Kopel said. “That’s an important part of how that message needs to be presented — it’s not based on hostility.”

Sondermann dismissed the notion that voters might forget about Buck’s hate-crime views by next spring when the race heats up.

“They’re not going to be front-of-mind a year from now, but with the power of television advertising, direct mail, viral campaigns, that doesn’t mean it can’t immediately be put back front-of-mind. We will hear about this assuming Buck proceeds with his candidacy.”

Buck didn’t respond to a request for comment. He has said he plans a tour of the state this summer to launch his campaign.

As for the dozen Weld County residents who seemingly had no trouble buying Buck’s argument that Andrade committed a hate crime when he killed Zapata?

“Republican voters don’t have judges in black robes to tell them how to interpret the law,” Sondermann said. “Voters get to interpret whatever the heck they want.”

Markey to House: Shepard, Zapata ‘two victims of hate crimes in my district’

Ernest Luning — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:05:09 +0000

An impassioned U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey invoked the brutal murders of gay college student Matthew Shepard and transgender Greeley woman Angie Zapata in her remarks Wednesday afternoon supporting federal hate-crimes legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“Matthew Shepard and Angie Zapata were two victims of hate crimes in my district,” the Fort Collins Democrat said during debate on the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also called the Matthew Shepard Act. “I have a duty to their memory that I take seriously.”

The bill, which adds gender, sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate-crime law, passed the House on a 249-175 vote and heads to the Senate. President Barack Obama has said he supports the legislation, which has been introduced in Congress regularly since Shepard’s murder in 1999.

Markey pointed out that Shepard died in Fort Collins and Zapata, whose killer was convicted on state hate-crime charges last week, was beaten to death in Greeley. The two cities are the population centers of the sprawling 4th Congressional District, which also covers most of eastern Colorado.

Here’s Markey’s speech:

And here’s what Markey said:

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Matthew Shepard died in a hospital less than five minutes from my home in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The depth of hate that drives such an act of violence leaves all those it touches bereft in the knowledge that such ugliness can exist on this Earth.

Angie Zapata was an 18-year-old transgender woman brutally murdered in Greeley, Colorado, this past July. It took a jury just two hours to convict Angie’s killer under Colorado’s first application of hate-crimes statute earlier this month.

This bill does not punish speech, thoughts, words or beliefs. It does not even punish hate speech. It punishes actions. It provides state and local authorities with federal assistance in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes

In this country, 45 states already have hate crimes legislation on the books — many of these statutes are more robust than the current federal law.

Matthew Shepard and Angie Zapata were two victims of hate crimes in my district. I have a duty to their memory that I take seriously.

Thank you very much.

Markey spoke after a North Carolina Republican, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, called the notion that Shepard was killed because he was gay “a hoax.”

Republican calls Matthew Shepard murder ‘a hoax’ in hate-crimes debate

Ernest Luning — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:49:58 +0000

A North Carolina Republican called the idea that Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was gay “a hoax” in the debate currently under way on the floor of the House of Representatives over legislation to expand federal hate-crimes law to cover sexual orientation.

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, speaking against the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, or the Matthew Shepard Act, called Shepard’s 1999 murder “a very unfortunate incident” committed during a robbery, despite the admission of Shepard’s killers that they lured him from a bar by pretending they were gay.

Here’s what Foxx said on the House floor:

“The hate crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. This — the bill was named for him, the hate crimes bill was named for him, but it’s really a hoax that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills.”

Media Matters posts the video of Foxx calling Shepard’s murder “a hoax”:

Shepard died in a Fort Collins hospital five days after he was discovered tied to a fence after Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson pistol-whipped him and left him to die in the cold. McKinney and Henderson were convicted and both are serving two consecutive life sentences for the murder.

Politico’s Glenn Thrush got a quick reaction to Foxx’s remarks:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who supports the hate crimes bill, stared in disbelief before answering a question about the statement.

“It’s just sad the Republican caucus has been reduced to such a fringe,” she said. “It’s sad they would go out of their way to prevent people from getting justice.”

Denver-based writer Dave Cullen wrote in Slate in 1999 in an article about the “gay-panic” defense advanced by one of Shepard’s convicted killers:

“According to detectives who interviewed both of the convicted murderers, there is no evidence that Shepard made any sexual advances to the pair — and the detectives dismissed the idea that the murder was the mere result of a robbery gone bad. ‘Far from that!’ scoffed Sgt. Rob DeBree, the chief investigator in the case. ‘They knew damn well he was gay … It started out as a robbery and burglary, and I sincerely believe the other activity was because he was gay.’”

“They just wanted to beat him bad enough to teach him a lesson, not to come on to straight people, and don’t be aggressive about it anymore,” McKinney’s girlfriend, Kristen Price, told ABC News shortly after the attack.

Here’s what Judy Shepard had to say last week about the hate-crimes legislation and the murder of her son, Matthew. Shepard watched the debate Wednesday from the House gallery.

John Aravosis comes out swinging at America Blog:

Even though Shepard’s murderers admitted that they killed him because he was gay, the far-right bigots who control the Republican party couldn’t resist the opportunity to gay-bash Shepard one last time. Now by referring to his brutal murder as a hoax. …

A hoax? Belittling the brutal murder of a 21 year old college student? And Republicans wonder why their angry, hateful, pathetic party is now only 20% of the US population.

Watch the video for yourself. Then feel free to call this sorry excuse for a human being and tell her what you think of her bigotry.

Phone: (202) 225-2071
Phone: (336) 778-0211
Phone: (828) 265-0240

The proposed legislation would add gender, sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate-crime law and allow federal authorities to step in when local law enforcement either asks for help or refuses to take the lead investigating and prosecuting bias-motivated crimes of violence. The federal law passed both houses of Congress in 2007 with bipartisan support, but then-President George W. Bush threatened to veto the bill and congressional leaders dropped it.

Earlier this month, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, and Illinois Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk introduced the bill again. The bill’s supporters are confident it will become law this year because President Barack Obama has said he will sign it.

Post, Tribune endorse adding sexual orientation to federal hate-crime law

Ernest Luning — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:05:38 +0000

In the wake of Colorado’s first successful prosecution of a hate-crime law against the killer of a transgender murder victim, both The Denver Post and The Greeley Tribune say it’s time to pass national legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal anti-bias laws.

Calling the conviction of Allen Andrade in the brutal slaying of transgender teen Angie Zapata “a milestone in the battle against hate crimes,” the Post editorial board opines that the jury’s swift verdict should “inject some urgency into the movement to expand federal hate-crime laws to include offenses based on sexual orientation.”

The legislation — known as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act and sometimes called the Matthew Shepard Act — passed out of the House Judiciary Committee the day after a Greeley jury convicted Andrade on a state hate-crime charge and is expected to face a vote of the full House this week.

“This measure is long overdue, and we hope it continues to move forward in Congress,” The Post writes.

The beating death of Zapata, who was born male but lived as a woman, has revived debate about the need for hate-crime laws. Some argue it unfairly creates a hierarchy of victimization. However, that argument ignores intent, which always has been a part of assessing penalties in our criminal justice system.

There is a difference between beating someone to steal their purse and pummeling them because of their sexual orientation. The latter involves a heightened level of malicious intent that is intended to inspire fear or send a message of intolerance to a community.

Andrade’s bone-chilling jailhouse statements seem to fit that bill. He said that “gay things need to die,” and that he “killed it.”

The Greeley Tribune reaches the same conclusion after observing the Andrade trial and conviction in its own backyard.

We hope this conviction will bring a sense of closure and justice for the family of Angie Zapata, who devotedly attended these proceedings and gave emotional testimony at Andrade’s sentencing hearing.

We also hope this trial will bring attention to efforts to pass a national hate-crime law. Singling out any individual or group for violence because of appearance, race, ethnicity, religious or lifestyle choice is heinous. These criminals must be subjected to the stiffest of punishments.

So far, only U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, a Boulder Democrat, is listed among the bill’s House co-sponsors. Polis, an openly gay man first elected to Congress last fall, came out strongly in favor of the federal hate-crimes law in a column the week before the Andrade trial got under way:

More than 125 incidents of anti-gay or anti-transgender violence occurred in Colorado in 2008 alone. With numbers like that, it’s evident that this type of trial was unfortunately bound to occur at some point.

That is why today, people throughout Colorado should join to say, “No more.” While we might disagree on many things politically regarding the legal status of unions or service in the military, we can all agree that targeting someone for violence and murder because that person is gay or transgender has no place in our country and certainly no place in Colorado.

U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, the Eldorado Springs Democrat who held Polis’ seat for a decade before winning election to the upper chamber last year, has also gone on record supporting the national hate-crime bill.

Read our continuing coverage of the Zapata murder trial.

Polis praises verdict in Zapata murder: ‘zero tolerance for hate crimes’

Ernest Luning — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:03:21 +0000

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who was elected to Congress in 2008 as an openly gay man, urged the passage of pending federal hate-crimes legislation in the wake of Wednesday’s conviction on murder and bias-motivated, or hate-crimes charges of the man accused in the brutal death of Angie Zapata, a transgender Greeley woman.

The Boulder Democrat is a co-sponsor of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, sometimes called the Matthew Shepard Act in memory of the gay college student who was beaten and left to die in Wyoming a decade ago. The bill made its way Thursday out of the House Judiciary Committee on a 15-12 vote.

Allen Andrade was sentenced to life without possibility of parole Wednesday after a Weld County jury convicted him in the murder of Angie Zapata. Andrade awaits sentencing on the hate-crime charge and other felonies, including automobile and identity theft, which could add 60 years to his sentence if he is convicted on habitual-criminal charges at a hearing set for May 8.

Here’s Polis’ statement:

“I hope this verdict will set a precedent that our country has zero tolerance for hate crimes. The horrific death of Angie Zapata is exactly why we need strong national hate crimes legislation to protect LGBT Americans. Attacks like this occur every day and perpetuate a climate of fear in the LGBT community. The Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, or Matthew Shepard Act, is expected to be on the House floor next week. As a cosponsor of this bill, I look forward to its being signed into law to help end this violence, especially in the many areas of the country lacking the hate crime protections that we have in Colorado.”

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed out of committee Thursday after Republicans unsuccessfully tried to amend it by stripping protection based on “gender identity,” or transgender status, from the bill, The Washington Blade reports. GOP members also tried to add protection for unborn children, pregnant women and members of the military to the bill, but their amendments were voted down.

In 2005, the Colorado Legislature added sexual orientation, including transgender status, to Colorado’s hate-crime law, broadening the statute from the Ethnic Intimidation Act to one covering bias-motivated crimes. The Andrade prosecution was the first time the Colorado law has been applied to the murder of a transgender victim.

Read our continuing coverage of the Zapata murder trial.