The Cincinnati Enquirer/AP |
NEWS
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Oct. 16, 1998 |
| The slaying of a gay University of Wyoming student has legislators nationwide renewing calls for hate crime laws that protect homosexuals.
Of the 40 or so states that have hate crime laws, only 21 cover offenses motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation. Indiana Rep. Bill Crawford said next year he will try, as he has for the past seven years, to get a hate-crimes law passed. "We are way behind the rest of the country on this issue, and incidents like the one in Wyoming show that it’s time we caught up," said the Indianapolis Democrat. Lawmakers from more than a dozen states have called for gay hate crime bills since Matthew Shepard died Monday, five days after he was pistol-whipped and tied to a fence post outside Laramie, Wyo. "I thing it’s a statement of principle that indicates people, regardless of their race, sexual orientation or gender, that society won’t tolerate acts of violence toward those people," said Montana Gov. Marc Racicot. Legislators in New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, among other places, have also called for hate crime laws to protect gays. Opponents of hate crime laws say Mr. Shepard’s death, while tragic, doesn’t change their belief that the laws either don’t work, are unfair to non-minorities or wrongly condone homosexuality. |
"If someone deserves an extra five years for a crime, they ought to get an extra five years whether they committed it against you, me a straight person, or anybody, not just for somebody who is considered gay or senior or Jewish," said New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.
In Congress Thursday, Democrats and Republicans in the House, on a voice vote, urged Congress to act swiftly on pending legislation that would expand the existing federal hate crimes law to include sex, disability and sexual orientation. Currently federal hate crime law covers only crimes motivated by race, color, religion or national origin. The effect of hate crime laws isn’t clear. Some states that have passed the laws, including California and Iowa, have seen more hate crimes reported, but that could be due to better reporting and not more incidents, said Michael Lieberman, counsel to the Anti-Defamation League in Washington. "It’s 100 percent certain that the response of the criminal justice system has improved," he said. "There are far more law enforcement officials who know how to identify and respond effectively to hate crimes. It’s not a quantifiable thing."
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