The assassination of Matthew Shepard left the world astonished. The brutality and gore surrounding the case left a dark legacy in Laramie and its residents, and branded a relatively quiet and tranquil place as a gay-basher town. Aside from these generalizations, the entire case brought attention and an opportune moment for the lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, and transgender communities to seek change and add severity to crimes that are committed on a sexual bias. Look into reality and ask yourself, should American law add gender-bias as part of hate-crime laws? Well if you have no answer to this question, this piece will illustrate some of the aspects included in the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, evidence leading to this legislative change to help decide whether “gender” should be a criteria in hate-crime laws.
Perhaps the biggest legacy Matthew Shepard left on American history is the recently passed Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. According to the Matthew Shepard Foundation, the act has three main effects on federal legislation:
1)Expand the law to authorize the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute certain bias-motivated crimes based on the victim's actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.
2)Eliminate a serious limitation on federal involvement under existing law which requires that a victim of a bias-motivated crime was attacked because he/she was engaged in a specified federally-protected activity such as voting, serving on a jury or attending school.
3)Add "gender" and "gender identity" to the Hate Crimes Statistics Act
Basically this act added sexual orientation as a bias for the prosecution of hate crimes and it allows federal government to investigate such biased crimes where local authorities fail to do so.
Then why should homosexuality be included in hate-crime laws? Well there are various instances when criminals perpetuate crimes against certain individuals based on defining characteristic such as race, gender, religious affiliation, and so on. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation there were 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008. It’s an alarming figure that shows that there’s still a certain disdain towards certain characteristic of individuals within these categories. Out of these incidents, 16.7 % were motivated by sexual-orientation bias. Basically around 1,300 of these incidents were triggered by some type of intolerance to the victim’s sexual-orientation. This is not mere jack and run incidents, these crimes are planned as a way to intimidate people within a community— the gay community in this case. The most startling fact is that from these sexual-bias incidents, 58.6% were committed against male homosexuals. This figure shows that certain criminals show a twisted type of severe homophobia for gay man. These “alleged” crimes occurred before the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act came into effect and were prosecuted and penalized under normal judicial law.
Sexual-bias crimes should be branded as hate-crimes because the statistics given by the FBI show that sexual orientation is the third highest motive that drives hate crimes. Just below racial and religious motivated crimes. The Laramie Project movie depicts the Matthew Shepard assassination as a hate crime triggered at some extent to the inability of American society to fully accept homosexuality, or in this instance a small-rural town of about 27,000 people. There is a multitude of opinions in the American people that accounts for the various perceptions on homosexuality. For instance, I am not against same-sex marriage, adoption by homosexual couples and others. Yet, there’s the other side of the spectrum—people who are against these actions in society. Some arguments against homosexuality are of religious and moral character and shouldn’t be disregarded as plain “hateful” or dull arguments.
What worries me the most is the fact that politicians are still very lethargic to take action and acknowledge that homosexuals are no longer a concealed group in society. Let’s start by looking at a comment made by Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, in a New York Times article in Access World News. “The idea that we're going to pass a law that's going to add further charges to someone based on what they may have been thinking, I think is wrong”. Well, Mr. Boehner is assuming that violent crimes such as Matthew Shepard’s assassination are already punished severely under current law. He is partially correct, both McKinney and Henderson were subjected to the death penalty for aggravated murder, and kidnapping. On the other hand Senator Carl Levin stated in the same article, "The hate crimes act will hopefully deter people from being targeted for violent attacks because of the color of their skin or their religion, their disability, their gender or their sexual orientation, regardless of where the crime takes place." This is a key point, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act intends to prevent hate crimes. The addition of sexual orientation is just the result of countless infamies the gay community has endured in American History. People have to consider that violent crimes against homosexual people like Matthew Shepard get triggered at the greatest extent by the perception of the subject sexuality. McKinney and Henderson could have just assault and rob Matthew of his properties if that was the initial plan they had in mind when the incident was about to happen. I’m pretty sure that if Matthew Shepard had been straight the perpetrators would have let him live and it would have been a plain robbery, which is still wrong, but not horrible. This was an act of hate towards a minority group and this new measure will get homophobes to think twice before they act against the gay community.
The LGBT community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) has endured neglect, violence, and in extreme cases pure hatred in American society for far too long. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is a new victory for the gay community, and its effect is yet to be discovered. There’s still room for change, which requires support of the American public. Be part of that change; learn more about local adoption policies regarding same-sex couples. Visit the Matthew Shepard Foundation website and find out more things to do to change the role of homosexuals in America. The rest is up to you!!!
* If Access World News hyperlink does not work here is the URL:
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/InfoWeb?p_product=AWNB&p_theme=aggregated5&p_action=doc&p_docid=12B3BFBD577F1B30&p_docnum=4&p_queryname=5
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