Obama Signs Hate Crimes Bill

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(NOTE: It should be mentioned that getting the hate crimes bill signed has been an 11-year effort in which Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has worked closely with the late Senator Edward Kennedy.  Leahy assumed chief sponsorship of the bill when Senator Kennedy became ill. –odum)

A great step by Obama, another promise kept.

And I can't help but ask: what are the odds McCain would have done this?

Tell me there's no difference.

8 thoughts on “Obama Signs Hate Crimes Bill”

  1. A first, long overdue, small step. I watched the signing livestreamed via the Advocate‘s website and found myself tearing up: recognition by our national government  of our humanity as gay people.

    Albeit only after a beating, or property destruction, or torture or death. Hate crimes were created as a category to allow federal jurisdiction when local law enforcement refused to prosecute white men for lynching black men, bombing black churches, burning crosses on their lawns to prevent them from voting.

    It’s not preventative; it’s punishment. Perhaps, I hope (but don’t rely on) it’s rough justice, after the fact.

    IIRC, getting sexual orientation into Vermont’s illegal discrimination list was one of the earliest steps the legislature took toward full equality. It took a very long time to get gender identity there.

    NanuqFC

    We embrace freedom and equality in theory, Mr. Speaker. We must also embrace them in fact. ~ Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, 2005

  2. I still have problems with the fact that the hate crimes bill was attached to a $680-billion military spending bill that includes $130 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder Russ Feingold wouldn’t support it. I’m really glad the bill passed, but does it really have a place with a war budget?

    Chris Hedges, one of my all-time favorite writers, put it together rather succinctly.

    The brutality of Matthew Shepard’s killers, who beat him to death for being gay, is a product of a culture that glorifies violence and sadism. It is the product of a militarized culture. We have more police, prisons, inmates, spies, mercenaries, weapons and troops than any other nation on Earth. Our military, which swallows half of the federal budget, is enormously popular-as if it is not part of government. The military values of hyper-masculinity, blind obedience and violence are an electric current that run through reality television and trash-talk programs where contestants endure pain while they betray and manipulate those around them in a ruthless world of competition. Friendship and compassion are banished.

    This hyper-masculinity is at the core of pornography with its fusion of violence and eroticism, as well as its physical and emotional degradation of women. It is an expression of the corporate state where human beings are reduced to commodities and companies have become proto-fascist enclaves devoted to maximziing profit. Militarism crushes the capacity for moral autonomy and difference. It isolates us from each other. It has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with our lack of compassion for our homeless, our poor, our mentally ill, our unemployed, our sick, and yes, our gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual citizens.

    To read more of Hedges’ article click here.

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