goes Gay
It's sometimes still unbelievable that in the United States we do not have a federal hate-crime law that classifies crimes against those in the LGBT community as hate-crimes. The Matthew Shepard Act from 2007 was close to being the first act to alleviate this issue, but due to a threat of veto by (the uneducated and unfightfully voted) President George Bush.
The Matthew Shepard Act (Officially the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007) would have done much for the LGBT community and others. It would have classified crimes crimes motivated by a victim's gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability as hate-crimes. It passed in the House on May 3, 2007 by a vote of 237 to 180. It passed in the Senate by attaching it as an amendment to the Defence Reauthorization bill. The amendment passed in the Senate by a vote of 60 to 39. That's when Bush showed his ugly head. He stated that he would veto the Defence Reauthorization bill if the amendment was attached to it. Since the house and senate did not have the necessary super-majority to override a veto, it got scrapped. Now we wait for Obama to become president so he will sign the bill into law, which he has said he would on his website.
But why is this legislation so important? Because hate-crimes against the LGBT community is on the rise. By FBI records hate-crimes against LGBT people have risen by over 25% since 2005. And that only counts the hate-crimes that are reported as hate-crimes. So states such as Indiana that don't include homosexuality as a hate-crime, all those attacks don't get counted. So while the FBI states there are around 1,267 hate-crimes in 2007 against homosexuals, that number is probably a lot higher. Just look at San Francisco where in 2007 there were 304 hate-crimes reported according to 'Community United Against Violence.'
So not only are the number in accurate because a lot of them are not 'classified' as hate-crimes, but there is also another reason that the number is considered extremely low. A lot of individuals would not want to come out of the closet and state that they were abused due to their perceived sexual orientation. This stems from a society where sometimes the victim is blamed for the abuse. This is why the Matthew Shepard Act needs to be passed, and I can't wait for Obama to take office so that it will get passed.
Sources include: San Jose Mercury News, and Wikipedia.