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 Religious Conservatives
Pressure Bush To Veto
Gay Hate Crimes Bill
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: May 2, 2007 - 7:00 pm ET
(Washington) Socially conservative groups appear
resigned to the likelihood the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act will be passed by
Congress and are now turning their opposition to calling for President Bush to
veto it.
The House is expected to vote on the bill on
Thursday. The legislation would add crimes based on sexuality to the federal
hate crime law.
Also called the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes
Prevention Act it would allow the Department of Justice to assist local
authorities in investigating and prosecuting cases in which violence occurs.
FBI statistics show that one in six hate crimes
is motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation.
The American Family Association has sent an alert
to thousands of its members calling on them to email and phone the White House
to call for a veto.
"The Hate Crimes Act criminalizes a vast
array of state and local acts and threatens religious leaders with criminal
prosecution for their thoughts, beliefs, and statements," AFA claims -
something supporters of the bill and LGBT civil rights groups dispute.
Concerned Women for America also is calling for a
veto.
In a letter to the President the group says
"there is no evidence to suggest that homosexuals or cross-dressers do not
receive equal protection under the law."
"Justice should be blind," said CWA
President Wendy Wright.
"Matthew Shepherd’s assailants received
the same sentence as Mary Stachowicz’s, a grandmother who was brutally
murdered by a homosexual man. Victims are — and should be — treated equally
in the justice system, regardless of their ‘sexual orientation.’ This
‘hate crimes’ bill would overturn this balance, creating second-class
victims and a federal justice system that discriminates against grandmothers,
children, women and men simply because they are heterosexual."
Stachowicz was murdered on November 13, 2002 by
her coworker Nicholas Gutierrez. Gutierrez claimed that Stachowicz continually harassed
him on the job about being gay and attempted to convert him to
Christianity.
On the day of the murder she allegedly asked him
"Why do you have sex with boys instead of girls?" He flew into a rage
and beat, stabbed and strangled her.
Since then her murder has been cited by Christian
conservatives as an unreported hate crime.
Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming
student, was lured from a bar by two men on the night of October 6, 1998.
He was found beaten and strung up on a fence along a remote country road and
died in hospital on October 12, 1998.
Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney are
currently serving life sentences in prison.
"Perhaps most frightening is the fact that
liberal legislators have refused any amendment which would substantively protect
religious expression in association with this legislation," said Concerned
Women for America spokesperson Matt Barber of adding gays to hate crimes laws.
"Similar laws have been used around the
world — and right here at home — to silence opposition to the homosexual
lifestyle. That refusal speaks volumes about the true agenda behind this
legislation, which is to grant official government recognition to both
homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors, and to silence opposition to those
behaviors," Barber said in a statement.
The hate crime bill passed the House in the last
Congress but was dropped in the then Republican-controlled Senate last
year.
Although the bill has bi-partisan support, with
Democrats now in control of both houses in Congress it is seen as having a
better chance of passage.
The legislation has the support of LGBT civil
rights groups and has been endorsed by more than 210 law enforcement, civil
rights, civic and religious organizations, including: the National Sheriffs'
Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police, U.S. Conference of
Mayors, and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.
©365Gay.com 2007
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