Today, Pres. Obama signed in to law the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This law expanded on the 1969 United States federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victims actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. This law is also the first ever law in the history of the U.S. federal government to extend legal protections to transgender persons.
This law is named after 2 victims of bias-motivated crimes in the United States, Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Matthew Shepard was a student who was tortured and murdered in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming because he was perceived to be gay. James Byrd Jr. was an African-American man who was tied to a truck by 2 known white supremacists, dragged from it and decapitated in Jasper, Texas in 1998. In both cases, we as a nation got a personal look at the sickness that intense hatred and prejudice wreaks — a hatred based on someone's perceived otherness, be it the color of their skin, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. It is a hatred that fuels a violence that terrorizes not only the victim, but others who may share similar characteristics.
I think the passage of this law will lead to more laws being passed that protect and recognize LGBT persons and other groups of people. I think this has a opened a door for more laws like this one to be recognized and brought to people's attention. This has given hope to gay right's activists saying that this could advance more issues like the repeal of DOMA, repeal of DADT, and passage of ENDA. I feel this sends a powerful message across America: That hate will NOT be tolerated. I feel that this is just the beginning. This really is the first federal gay rights act, so it is truly an historic moment that we must celebrate. I think this is America acknowledging homophobia as a social problem.
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Critique on: Ms. Zeiss' Editorial
ReplyDeleteObama Passes New Hate Crimes Law
I found this editorial quit interesting in so much that it touches on a subject matter that affects millions of Americans nationwide. This editorial has enough information to help identify why the law that was passed was named Mathew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. It also explained that this law was expanding on the 1969 United States Federal Hate Crimes Law to include crimes committed by a victims actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
I agree with Ms. Zeiss on the importance of this law being passed. It is time that we as nation stood up and protected all our citizens, no matter what religion, race, creed, gender, disability or any other difference that we may have. Every individual deserves to be treated with respect and have equal protection under the law.
Like Ms. Zeiss, I can only hope that this is the beginning of our nation taking the firm and decisive steps to insure that all its people can live and feel that they too matter. We as a nation must protect all our citizens. We cannot be a country where a person is afraid to be who they are because they do not fit into someone else’s views on how a person should live their lives. We are all different individuals and as such we have the unalienable rights given to us by God and our founding fathers to the pursue of happiness.
The only thing that would have made reading this editorial more helpful would have been if Ms. Zeiss had actually typed out what the abbreviations LGBT, DOMA, DADT and ENDA stand for and embed a link to these groups.
Up until the last paragraph I was following along, but I got lost in all the abbreviations that were unknown to me. Other than that I found Ms. Zeiss editorial interesting and I enjoyed reading it.
by: Genoveva Nannapaneni