The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act passed through Congress yesterday. It was attached to a defense department bill that will also authorize $130 billion to continue fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Senate voted 68-29 to pass the bill, which adds sexual orientation, gender, disability or gender identity to current hate crimes law, which already defines a hate crime as one motivated by a person's religion, race, national origin or color. President Obama has promised to sign the bill.
Although the LGBT community are not the only ones who will benefit from this new law, the community has been working for more than 11 years to get a bill passed that offers some form of protection against hate crimes.
The law will allow federal prosecutors to step in to try violent hate-crime cases if local authorities cannot or will not secure an appropriate conviction. It also opens up federal funding for local law enforcement to handle the typically high cost of investigation in such cases.
The act is named to honor Matthew Shepard as well as James Byrd, an African-American resident of Texas brutally dragged to death in 1998 in a notorious hate crime.
Here's more about the Hate Crimes law, what it does and what it does not do.
Photo by GINA VAN HOOF courtesy of the Matthew Shepard Foundation