Just passing this announcement on from The Matthew Shepard Foundation. They report that we are,
ONE STEP CLOSER TO ERASING HATE!
In the midst of congressional resolutions that urge us to hate Moslems, Arabs, Iran, and Palestinians, sometimes this Democratic congress pulls one off that goes against the grain of our evangelical uber religious nature. It just passed an act to protect homosexuals from hate crimes.
The Matthew Shepard Act sends a bold and unmistakable message that violent crimes committed in the name of hate must end.
Judy and Dennis Shepard
Casper, WY – September 27, 2007 – The Matthew Shepard Foundation applauds today’s passage of the historic Matthew Shepard Act — inclusive federal hate crimes legislation.
“Today’s Senate vote sends a bold and unmistakable message that violent crimes committed in the name of hate must end,” said Judy and Dennis Shepard, Matthew Shepard’s parents. “The Matthew Shepard Act is an essential step to erasing hate in America and we are humbled that it bears our son’s name. It has been almost nine years since Matthew was taken from us. This bill is a fitting tribute to his memory and to all of those who have lost their lives to hate.”
“We are especially thankful to Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) for their unwavering leadership in ensuring the passage of this bill,” said Judy Shepard, Executive Director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation.
“For far too long this important piece of civil rights legislation has been misconstrued and distorted by its opponents,” continued Judy Shepard. “Both Houses of Congress overcame the lies and misinformation claiming the bill would take away our rights to free expression and religious liberty. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today we join with millions of Americans to encourage the White House to follow Congress and ensure that the Matthew Shepard Act becomes law.”
The legislation is formally entitled, the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 1105). It was offered as a bipartisan amendment by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) to the Department of Defense authorization bill currently before the U.S. Senate. The virtually identical House version of the bill passed overwhelmingly on May 3rd, 2007 with a bipartisan vote of 237 to 180 as an appropriate and measured response to the unrelenting and under-addressed problem of hates crimes against individuals based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.
The Matthew Shepard Foundation also asks that you call your senators and thank them for supporting the Matthew Shepard Act.
This is a historic time for America! Now that the Matthew Shepard Act has passed through the Senate, it is important for your leaders to be thanked. CALL NOW & THANK YOUR SENATORS for their support of the Matthew Shepard Act.
CALL – (202) 224-3121: Ask for your Senators
What more can one say. We are in a phase of political change, one that might bring America back to its civil and human rights leadership at home and around the world. Liberal Democrats have been absent for too long.
Additional information:
By a 60-39 vote, the Senate just passed Matthew Shepard Act. Sixty votes were required for cloture. Happy day! I don’t know who the missing voter is yet.
Now we’ll see if the president will veto the defense appropriations bill to which the MSA is attached, as he has threatened to do.
There is also no tallies on who voted against this Act, but I suspect it is the remnants of the pro-evangelical Republicans, and possibly some Democrats.
This further information is from the Miami Herald:
This is Matthew Shepard. You might better recognize him straddled over a fence, dead.
There has been a trend in jurisprudence for the last couple of hundred years to factor in a person’s (inferred) mental state when determining the degree of culpability and punishment.
In the beginning, say with the Puritans, repentance played a big part. The penitentiary movement of the 19th Century is based upon this as well. The prisons were sent up so people could repent rather than just be punished.
Today we frequently see judges sentence people to longer terms when they don’t show any remorse. In other legal system the person’s interior mental state is not a factor. There is the “eye for an eye” system and there is the monetary recompense system used in many cultures.
Why I bring this up, is because the Bush admin has been pushing this framework far beyond where it has ever been used before. Several high profile “terrorist” cases, such as those involving amateurish groups with no capability of doing anything have been based upon the group’s intentions. In several cases even the idle speculation that they engaged in wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been furthered by government agents.
This is a variety of prosecution for thought crimes. The same can be true of “hate” crimes. What is the ethical basis for treating a person who kills another more harshly because they hate the victim for some personal characteristic rather than because they just want to rob them?
If the facts of the crime are the same then why should the motivation of the perpetrator be a factor? In the case of Matthew Shepard there were two crimes committed – torture and murder. Are the nature of these crimes different because the perpetrators were homophobic?
The most famous case of murder in the 1920’s was the Leopold and Loeb affair. They committed murder for “kicks” and to see if they could get away with it. They didn’t. It was the callousness that offended people.
The more types of crimes that are given special status the further we move away from one of the basis of the rule of law, that all men are equal before the law.
Using a person’s mental state as a criterion to determine guilt and punishment is a dangerous path to go down. We have many examples of what happens when it gets out of hand from the Soviet show trials of the 1930’s to Mao’s “reeducation”.
All I’m saying is that legal scholars should look carefully at the path we have been taking and see if is appropriate for a democracy.
I believe that the ACT is focused on hate crimes, acts, not thoughts. It is of course possible to “conspire” to engage in hate acts, if you tell others to do the deeds, and in that area there might some ambiguity. But acts are acts and they constitute facts that an actual crime has been committed.
There is no argument here. Hate speech is otherwise protected because it protects us.
There is no circumstance that would justify an attack on Iran. But like America, e.g., Jena, they have a long way to go.
Public Execution: Iranian authorities hanged two allegedly gay young men in 2005.