Tag: Matthew Shepard Act

** Updated** The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed the House by a wide margin in the spring. Debate included a rousing short speech...

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 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...

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.

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, political observers say.

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.

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.

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.

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.