@1 Just what I was thinking.
"Hey, queers, all the responsibility is on Congress. Go bug them and our guy will sign the paper."

The magnitude? The magnitude is close to nil. How many prosecutions do you expect to see under this act? How important is adding another layer of hate-crimes law, really? How does that compare to actions that would immediately affect thousands of gay servicemen and women, for instance?

What I see here is politicians using Matthew Shepard's name as cover. Those poor boys are being exploited once again -- "look at the MAGNITUDE, people!", coming from people who have no intention of ever getting serious about rights. "Matthew Shepard, Matthew Shepard", over and over, but what about people alive today? This legislation is a half-assed response to a ten-year-old question. WHAT ABOUT TODAY? WHAT ABOUT DADT?

Steve Hildebrand is asking for it. Magnitude, my ass.

"I just hope the community can appreciate the meaning and magnitude for this legislation...."

I think Larry Craig said it like this: "I hope you appreciate the fact that I sucked your cock, now keep your mouth shut."

Dan Savage is going to be in my town tomorrow, and a commenter to the article on our local paper's website announcing his visit said this:

I hear that Dan Savage is an excellent speaker and puts in a lot of long and hard hours, especically late night and is always willing to give his input on the subject. I don't know how big his staff is, but with him traveling the country, speaking and continuing with his column must be a pain-staking endeavor. Lets not blow this chance to see such a speaker give his insightful and deeply penetrating thoughts and ideas.

I'd hate to say it but this is token AT BEST! All crime is a hate crime. Obama's just going to use this to shore up his support of the GLBT community in 2012. I mean it won't work but then again the only GLBT's that he talks to is HRC.

This legislation is important.
This is the first time the Feds have recognized us as a distinct class of people. Ever.
This legislation strengthens our argument that DOMA laws are based on animus, for example.
It doesn't hurt to recognize real change when it happens. It may not feel like much, but this hate crimes bill is very important.

"So long as the government, Obama's government, legalizes and defends discrimination and apartheid against lgbt people, there will be some bigots who feel justified to attack lgbt people."

Uh, Obama supports ENDA (would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability for civilian nonreligious employers with over 15 employees) and Congress will probably pass it before the 2010. People who are commenting on this stuff really need to learn to follow all of the issues instead of just whatever's in the newspaper today.

Also, Peacer, perhaps the Stranger is aware that the Department of Justice is obliged to defend Congressional legislation in court when it is challenged unless the DOJ thinks the law is so clearly and completely unconstitutional (which DADT can't be, since courts have previously deemed it constitutional) that it can't be defended without engaging in frivolous litigation.

The Log Cabin Republicans sued, even though the courts have already ruled on the issue, precisely in order to create the headlines about Obama's DOJ defending the law, so ignorant people would run around wailing "oh noes the Obama DOJ is doing its job! instead of only doing what's in the president's political interests like the Bush DOJ did! oh noes!"

Looks like the Log Cabin Republicans are pretty clever judges of character.

"All crime is a hate crime."

What the hell does that mean? Cheating on my taxes is a crime. Who does it indicate I hate? America?

@9, this "it's the law, the Prez has to defend it" excuse is bullshit. Obama could issue a one-sentence order saying that DADT isn't going to be enforced in less than an hour if he gave a crap. He doesn't.

Let me save The Stranger the trouble of responding:
"But it's NOT ENOUGH! The POTUS should spend EVERY WAKING HOUR for the rest of his term doing nothing but working on gay-friendly everything."
Of course nothing Obama does will ever be enough because their collective mind has been made up. Obama can spend the remainder of what may be his sole term trying to make it up to this small minority, thereby wasting his breath with them and supplying nonstop ammunition to his enemies, or he can work on healthcare and the economy and all those other pesky little issues that pale in comparison to gay marriage rights.

"Obama could issue a one-sentence order saying that DADT isn't going to be enforced in less than an hour if he gave a crap. He doesn't."

Really, how does he do that? How does the president tell Congress, "Screw you, I don't have to enforce your laws if I don't personally agree with them" without turning into, well, George W. Bush?

Oh, that was only a problem when it was Bush violating duly-enacted statutes banning wiretapping and torture? It's totally cool when "our side" does it for stuff we want?

The rule of law is becoming such a joke in this country.

LOL @ 6

Hate crimes are defined by the fact that they are an attack on a group or community and not specifically attacking an individual. The people who killed Mathew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. were looking to kill a homosexual and a black man (repectively) not those two people individually. The attacks were to "send a message" to those communities to let them know that they are not welcome. That is a hate crime. That is why hate crime legislation is important. It tells the bigots that this is not acceptable. With it being a federal crime, those types of crime committed in places unlikely to prosecute can now be handled by the FBI just like the murderd of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Andrew Schwerner.

@14

Obama supports you, but he won't go to bat for you unless he's sure the majority of the country supports him. That's your reality, now deal with it. The hate crimes thing is a lot better than what you had with the previous prez or that cranky-ass old white dude you coulda had. You pissed? Write your congressman or quit yer whinin' already.

Dear President Obama,

It's nice that you signed the bill, but frankly I would have expected that from any Democratic president, just as I would expect that any Republican president would have vetoed it. This is 2009 after all.

Now when the fuck are you going to start fulfilling your campaign promises?

#17: You really believe that? You think the killers of Matthew Shepard were out to make a point to America's gay community? You think those two rednecks were out to terrorize gay people in other cities via the "message" of killing a fag?

I think they deserved everything they got as punishment. However, I have to be honest, the facts of the Shepard case point to ruffians, crystal meth, days without sleeping, and perhaps prior sexual encounters.

This in no way means they deserved lighter--or stronger--sentances. I just don't think creating gays as a "special class" of victims is helpful. In fact, I don't want to be a special class. I want to get married like my straight brother can. Or join the Army should I choose. And should my straight brother get attacked and left for dead in a lonely field? I want the justice I would have recieved even though I am a white homosexual and he is a white heterosexual.

Oh well, at least now---after 23 years of taking gay dollars--the HRC can claim a "victory".

Dear Paul,

Remember President Clinton who signed the Defense of Marriage Act? Can you refresh my memory on whether he was a Democrat? It's so hard to remember stuff that happened in the Stone Ages of 1996.

Also, which president has managed to fulfill all his campaign promises in the first 9.5 months of his presidency while fighting two wars and being in an economic recession with an unemployment rate of nearly 10%?

Oh, wait, it's 2009. The political process has magically sped up! And people don't freak out about legislation getting "rammed through" when it takes 3 months for it to get past just a committee, much less get a floor vote! Everything I see happening, particularly with health care reform, must actually be taking place in a different year.

SpecialBrew,

You might want to try reading the law before you assume it treats homosexuals differently than heterosexuals. The law is about people's being attacked *for* their sexual orientation, just as existing hate crime law is about people's being attacked *for* their religion, race, nationality, etc. White people can be victims of hate crimes and have their attackers prosecuted under the federal law. After today, straight people who are attacked *because* they are straight also can have their attackers prosecuted under the federal law.

Also, SpecialBrew, technically you already can get married LIKE YOUR STRAIGHT BROTHER CAN: to a woman. If that's all you're after, hey, you're set!

The point is I want equal protection under the law. Not to be a special class of minority that gets an extra set of scrutiny to my would-be attackers. Give me the legal rights I am entitled to as an American citizen, not the mantle of extra-special victim to be protected.

SpecialBrew,

I don't think you understand how hate crimes laws work. They are not automatically applied to every crime against members of minority groups. I am a racial and religious minority, but if some guy mugs me, they're not going to prosecute him for a hate crime unless he makes it clear that he was targeting me *because of* my race or religion. By the same token, if my white male Christian cis-gender hetero Anglo-Saxon-origin U.S.-born best friend gets mugged by two guys screaming "let's get Whitey!" his attackers might get prosecuted for a hate crime.

So who is the "extra special victim" here? Me, the minority, or him, the embodiment of The Man?

I think the lot of you commenters don't have the long-view and patience that this majorly fucked up country requires.

Perhaps most of you are not truly aware how fucking fast culture has been changing in the past--what--100 years? Even 200 years. Change in cultural norms has been blistering!! Do you understand what that means? Do you understand how difficult it is for our psyches to adapt that fast? We are still, largely, using Stone Age brains to deal with Post-Industrial Culture. Not everyone, to be sure, but a ridiculously significant proportion of the population ---of this USA country, to say nothing of thre rest of the freakin' world--- is responding to increasingly rapid change with minds that barely accept generational change.

Y'all are all "yeah, it's not enough.. we expected more!!!!!!!!!". But I suspect that you don't actually grok how fucked up and complicated this "USA" actually is.

We're a "country" largely ruled by emotionalism and fear. That's the FOX/O'Reilly/Limbaugh/etc. angle. Emotional scare tactics. And it's been going on since before WWII.

And especially during WWII.
Fucking Ozzie and Harriet are being used on "Say No to R-71" flyers.

Patience and careful attention.
That is what is needed. Not always dramatic clamoring.

We've come a seriously long way already. We have a long way to go.

Catch your fucking breath and think very carefully.

I do not think that this piece of legislation - attached to the inherently conservative Defense Budget - is motivated by a sense of responsibility to LGBT people. Nothing about hate crimes legislation will make us safer or able to access rights or privileges that we actually need on a day to day basis. Nothing about it protects us from the persecution we face on a regular basis from US law enforcement. The only thing this legislation does is enable prosecutors to push for longer sentences against defendants at their own discretion. In a country whose prison population is ridiculously large - and disproportionately made up of minorities - we cannot expect this to benefit our or any other oppressed community. In New Jersey, four black dykes were sent to prison because a man harassed them on the street, then attacked them physically, and a bystander came to their aid and injured the harasser. The prosecution manipulated laws about gang activities to get the kinds of sentences they wanted against these women. What makes us think this new law will be used any differently? Do we really think that adding more power to an unjust system will ever offer us justice? This is a joke.

I'm guessing josieposie is the type to oppose criminalizing rape where the victim wasn't first beaten into unconsciousness, because there have been cases in which black men have been falsely accused and unjustly convicted of sexual assault. You can't add more power to an unjust system! You can't use the master's tools to tear down the master's house!

PGofHSM - I appreciate your point, but this particular piece of legislation doesn't have to do with "criminalization" at all. The acts that could qualify as a hate crime are already illegal - this really only impacts sentencing requirements. And yes, I am generally very skeptical about increasing sentencing requirements when statistics show very clearly that who we send to prison is based more on race, class, and often gender and sexuality, than it is on principles of justice.

DA's have wide latitude on how to prosecute crimes - this enables them to push for longer sentences in cases that THEY think constitute hate crimes. My point is that I very much doubt that this expansion of hate crimes legislation will have any benefit to LGBT people, since police and DA's work so closely with each other, and both tend to have strong biases against the LGBT community. For instance, see the recent Slate article that shows that even though the courts overturned anti-cruising laws, police have been picking up gay men on exactly those charges for over two decades since the ruling (http://www.slate.com/id/2233014/).

Rather than being used to try to shift public sentiment about gay folks (whether our criminal justice system does much on the front of prevention is a whole separate conversation), my guess is that expanded hate crimes legislation will instead be used by overzealous prosecutors to selectively procure longer sentences for people they are already hell-bent on sending to prison. You can rest assured that the majority of real hate crimes against LGBT people will still go unprosecuted, because the majority of police in this country refuse to do their job correctly when it comes to our complaints. I don't see how this new law changes that.

josieposie,

Thanks for taking that in good humor, I was probably excessively harsh.

But rather than complaining about how DAs (who are state-level prosecutors) use their discretion generally, can you cite any examples of *federal* prosecutors using *federal hate crimes laws* -- which have existed for decades, so there ought to be a fair amount of empirical evidence out there -- to disadvantage non-whites, women, LGBT folks, the poor, et al?

Baby steps people!!!!!!!!
Have you not seen the religious right, hatred and bigotry?
I know Obama has not come through with all of his promises, but yet I think the GLBT community (of which I am a part of) expected him to wave a wand.
He's moving in the right direction.
I mostly agree with 26, except for the extreme condesendcing comments. ??? Do you know what that means??? hahaha

Unless equallity is fully achieved, gays ARE a special class, even if you don't like it. Just because it is another minority that suffers from discrimination. If you don't want to be a "special class", something has to be done. Your brother doesn't have to do anything because he doesn't need to. That's why this legislation is so important. On the other hand, consciousness is something we can spread in daily life. As we know, the Matthew Shepard foundation works on both sides.

BTW, something as trivial as buying a present can add a special value if, for instance, we get a Mathew Sheppard pendant because 100% of the nets go to the foundation. I have just found the page and wanted to share it.

My comment was in response to #20 (SpecialBrew)