In one of the closing scenes of the Laramie Project, one of the interview subjects is heard asking, “what’s changed?” At the time of the interview no new hate crime legislation had been passed in Wyoming, however, the Federal Government passed an act that that extended Hate Crimes to people of alternate sexual orientations. The real question one should be left asking is why haven’t things changed not just in Wyoming, but in many states across the country?
The original Federal Civil Rights Act or 18 U.S.C. Section 245 was enacted to protect people with regards to their race or religion. While this act was important when it was passed in the 1960’s, it does little to protect people with regards to their sexual orientation. In 2009, Congress passed a more sweeping bill to protect the rights of these people. Titled The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, the ill removed the requirement that victims be involved in federally protected activities such as voting or attending school, giving Federal authorities the power to pursue hate-crimes if local police choose not to, providing $15 million dollars over the next three years for states to investigate and prosecute these crimes and requires the FBI to track crimes against transgender people.
This legislation has been important for many people across the country in terms of making them feel that their fights are being protected. However, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), over half the states, including Wyoming, still do not have hate crime laws that take into account sexual orientation in any way. Believe it or not, Wyoming is the only state that still does not have hate crimes legislation, period.
Now, many people complain that everyone hates Wyoming because of this one incident and that they are wrongly being branded as intolerant. But while most Wyomingites may be just as accepting as anyone else, their failure to pass any Hate Crimes Legislation, especially in the aftermath of Matthew Shepard’s death, has not helped their cause. Ten years after the fact, “The Equality State,” which was the first to give women the right to vote, is not liable for protecting the rights of those women who choose not to marry a man.
This is not for a lack of effort on the part of the Wyoming State Legislature. According to Wyoming Tribune-Eagle articles from October and November 1998, show there was a huge push in the immediate aftermath of Matthew Shepard’s death to pass a “bias crime” bill. Although the bill had support from the spontaneously created “Wyoming Bias Crime Coalition”, the bill was hotly debated by the legislature as well as gubernatorial candidates Jim Geringer and John Vinich. However, by February 1999, the State Legislature had attempted and failed to pass seven separate hate crimes bills.
It is all too easy to say that enough of Wyoming’s population is either ignorant or intolerant, as evidenced by there being enough representatives to vote these measures down. But if we are to look at a state like Colorado, which by many people is considered a fairly tolerant state, there doesn’t seem to be much progress for hate crimes legislation even only a few months after Matthew Shepard’s death. According to “The Gazette” in January of 1999, the Colorado State Legislature failed in “an annual ritual,” to expand hate crimes protection to not just different groups on the basis of sexual orientation, age and mental or physical disabilities.
It should be noted that the lawmakers who vote these type of bills down, be it in Wyoming or Colorado or any other state, do not necessarily (at least publicly) do so because they feel animosity towards people of color, or Muslims, or homosexuals. Instead, these legislators point to other reasons such as segregating certain groups in the eyes of the law or because the acts involved in committing a most hate crimes are already illegal. Colorado State Senator John Andrews said in 1999 that “all violence will not be tolerated… I become concerned that we… tribalize America,” with regards to passing new hate crimes legislation.
While it is true that making a crime more illegal appears not just redundant but meaningless as well as possibly emphasizing the boundaries we want to erase in our society, other legislators who favor more protections see it differently. “I’m not naïve enough not to think that it’s not sexual orientation that gets this bill in trouble every time I offer it,” says Senator Dorothy Rupert about her sponsorship of efforts to extend the protections of hate crimes legislation to new groups.
The fact of the matter is that while the Federal Government has been able to extend new protections to groups defined by their sexual orientation, the majority of the country not just Wyoming, is lagging behind. This does not even apply specifically to issues of sexuality. According to the ADL, 31 states do not classify hate crimes based on gender and 42 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., 10 states do not include provisions for crimes committed against a person because of their race, religion or ethnicity.
So what does this lack of change say about Americans? Is it possible that the Nation, not just Wyoming, is intolerant? The answer, I believe is no. As I pointed out before in this essay, many legislators did not elect to extend protections to various groups for reasons other than the fact that doing so would be against their religious beliefs or that they regarded a group as sub-human. However, this does not excuse others from the fact that they knowingly will not support any legislation geared toward homosexuals or others. For them, it appears that there is something more at stake than protecting the lives of everyone they have been elected to serve in spite of the fact that many people in their respective districts might share their views.
The great thing about the Federal Government is that although there are Representatives and officials that have never and will never support Homosexuality, there are enough that will be willing to protect everyone within the United States, even if they do not share their views. Congress represents the country as a whole and here is where Americans have proven their tolerance. Just as hate crimes are a statement against groups in our society, so is the legislation that our Nation has passed is a statement against intolerance and that is how we have changed for the better.
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