Last week I began reading Judy Shepard’s memoir The Meaning of Matthew: My Son’s Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed.*
On Thursday of last week, the House passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The measure says “The problem of crimes motivated by bias is sufficiently serious, widespread and interstate in nature as to warrant federal assistance to states, local jurisdictions and Indian tribes.”Its purpose is to expand the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include those crimes motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
On June 7, 1998 in Jasper, Texas, three white men chained James Byrd, Jr., an African American man, to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged him to his death. Byrd was a 49-year-old disabled vacuum cleaner salesman. On the night of October 6, 2008, Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence, tortured, and left in a coma because he was gay. Matthew died on October 12 from severe head injuries.
The national and international press covered these brutal murders, which helped to galvanize the beginning of the fight to update U.S. hate crime legislation at both the state and federal levels.
Obama has pledged to sign it if it passes the Senate.
* Nobody gave me anything, FTC.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
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