Discrimination is nothing new to Nathan Runkle. Growing up in a rural, insular farming town near Dayton, Ohio, Runkle, as a gay high school student, frequently encountered homophobia from his peers and other members of the community. Manifested in vitriolic nicknames, derogatory terms and religious condemnation of the “homosexual lifestyle,” these anti-gay sentiments were promulgated throughout most of the socially conservative Dayton area.
But four months ago, Runkle, who now lives in Chicago and works as an animal rights activist, experienced a new extreme in discrimination. He walked away from it with two facial fractures, a nose broken in eight different places, a deviated septum, an eye swollen shut and severe bruising as souvenirs.
On December 27, 2008, while visiting family at home, Runkle went out with his sister Lana and his close friend Dan to Club Masque, a gay nightclub in downtown Dayton. He had been to the club before, and he understood that there was a history of tension between the gay and straight patrons of the club. Masque is well known in the area for playing the best dance music, and many locals, regardless of sexual orientation, frequent the club. In recent months, Runkle describes, “There had been a growing sense of tension” in the club, where “homophobic people had come and caused problems, throwing hateful terms around.” Masque’s management did little to dispel the issue, even, according to Runkle, asking the gay targets of the comments to either leave the establishment or deal with the comments.
As Saturday night became Sunday morning at Masque, Dan dropped his glasses, prompting Runkle to assist his friend in a search on the floor. After an unsuccessful ferret around the crowded dance floor, Runkle stood up and was met with a large, white male accompanied by a number of other men. Almost immediately, the man threw his fist at Runkle, connecting with his face. He continued swinging, and after getting in four or five hard punches, he and his companions fled the scene. Security cameras did not capture images of the man, although several witnesses were able to attest to police basic details of Runkle’s story.
“I had never seen him before, never talked to him before in my life,” Runkle says of the man, adding, “There was no reason why this person would have had any sort of animosity toward me.” Citing the history of homophobic tension at Masque, the fact that he had no previous interaction with the assailant and “the amount of viciousness” of the attack, Runkle feels the incident was a hate-related crime. “It wasn’t, like, one punch,” he says. “It was severe brutality. When you grow up gay and you’re on the receiving end of a lot of homophobia, I think you’re able to identify rather quickly someone who is unfriendly toward you for who you are.”
The lack of suspects left the police with little evidence to pursue Runkle’s case, but even if authorities had identified and apprehended the attacker, the beating would not be classified as a hate crime or even considered in hate crime statistics collection. In Ohio, as well as 12 other states in America, there is no legal protection for people victimized based on their sexual orientation.
Hate crimes, or bias-motivated crimes, are acts of violence that specifically target a victim because of his membership in a particular social group. Thirteen states in America have anti-hate crime laws that include race, religion and ethnicity but do not cover sexual orientation in the legislation, while five states have no legal hate crimes protections at all.
In the spring of 2007, Congress nearly passed a federal hate crimes bill that would have provided federal assistance to state governments to help fund the prosecution of bias-motivated crimes. The bill passed in the House of Representatives and was referred to committee in the Senate, but after President George W. Bush threatened to veto the bill if it passed, the Senate took no further action.
A nearly identical bill faces renewed life in a government where Democrats now wield power. In April of this year, the bill was reintroduced in the House, and gay rights advocates and policy analysts are positing that President Barack Obama and the newly Democratic Congress will sign the bill into law.
Meanwhile, some state legislatures are developing their own anti-hate crime laws that make considerations for sexual orientation, most widely defined legislatively as heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality. Advocates argue that these laws are necessary because hate crimes are “message crimes” designed to threaten an entire sect of people. But pro-inclusion groups face strong resistance from conservatives, who argue for a variety of reasons that adding sexual orientation to the list of protected categories is unnecessary and would provoke more problems than it would solve.
This opposition, visible largely in southern or mid-western states with a history of strict conservatism and rapt religious devotion, reveals the troubling reality of widespread homophobic beliefs in these regions.
The Push for Sexual Orientation-Inclusive Law
Since 1999, gay rights activists have made consistent attempts to enact federal measures that would include sexual orientation as a protected category in hate crime laws. In fact, sexual orientation-inclusive hate crimes legislation has been proposed five previous times.
The struggle to pass a sexual orientation-inclusive federal bill may end soon, as a new bill of this sort, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (LLEHCPA), popularly known as the Matthew Shepard Act, was introduced into the House on April 2. The bill, introduced by Rep. John Conyers, D-MI, and backed by 56 other sponsors, amends current hate crimes-related language to include both sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories. On April 29, the bill, H.R. 1913, was passed in the House by a vote of 249 to 175.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA, introduced a companion bill, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, S. 909, in the Senate on April 28. Both the House and the Senate bill titles make reference to Matthew Shepard, who became the poster child for sexual orientation-inclusive hate crimes legislation after his murder in Laramie, Wyo. in 1998. Shepard was brutally attacked solely for being gay, and his heavily-publicized story remains one of the most widely-known hate crimes in American history. Major media sources, including The New York Times, foresee the swift approval of the bill named after Shepard in the Senate, which would then be reviewed by the House and subsequently officially signed into law.
The last time legislators made a move to institute a federal hate crimes bill was in 2007, when a nearly identical bill with the same name was disputed. Although the bill failed, it demonstrated more success than any of its predecessors, passing in the House but ultimately stalling in the Senate.
The LLEHCPA revises the federal hate crimes statute so that it encompasses violent and attempted violent crimes based on the victim’s perceived or actual gender, sexual orientation or gender identity. It also allows federal authorities greater flexibility in aiding local and state governments in the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. In order for the Department of Justice to intervene and legally assume jurisdiction over a hate crime case, the attorney general must confirm that one of three conditions is met: the state or local government requests the aid, the state or local government is unwilling or unable to investigate the case or the outcome of the case does not satisfy federal interest in eradicating hate crimes. Additionally, the LLEHCPA provides funding through grants to cover costs of the prosecution and investigation of hate crimes and to implement educational programs to reduce the number of hate crimes committed by juveniles. The 2009 bill appropriates 10 million dollars to be made available for authorization and distribution over the next two years.
Conyers, along with co-sponsor Rep. Mark Kirk, R-IL, and 171 other supporters from both parties, introduced the bill, H.R. 1592, in the House in March of 2007. The stand-alone bill was passed by a vote of 237 to 180, leaving further action to the Senate.
In April of 2007, Kennedy and Sen. Gordon Smith, R-OR, backed by 40 bi-partisan co-sponsors, introduced a version of the LLEHCPA in the Senate, S. 1105. However, they filed the bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, which dealt with increasing pay for members of the armed services and other Iraq War spending-related issues. Although the amendment was adopted that September and added to the defense bill after a cloture vote, the hate crimes proposal was not included in the final version of the bill.
A large reason for the amendment’s failure was a threat from President Bush, who in May indicated in a statement of administration policy that he would veto a federal hate crimes bill, calling it “unnecessary and constitutionally questionable.” Many senators who supported the hate crimes provision did not want to risk the entire defense bill being vetoed, as this would hold up a pay raise for military personnel. Buckling under the pressures of the White House and the Republican leadership, Democratic leaders stripped the amendment from the bill in mid-December.
With Obama in the White House and a democratic majority ruling Congress, the hate crimes bill faces new life. On his website during his election campaign, Obama pledged to address the issue specifically, saying he would “strengthen federal hate crimes legislation, expand hate crimes protection by passing the Matthew Shepard Act, and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice’s Criminal Section.”
Oppositional Views
Despite Obama’s promise to institute a federal law concerning hate crimes, many officials in the country do not support the movement, taking issue with the concept altogether and dismissing it as an unnecessary dispute.
Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based organization that aims to further its views on socially conservative public policy, believes that the legislation is pointless. He says, “They’re already criminalized, but they have the motive as a second factor, adding another offense. It does little more than add a second prosecution and is essentially unnecessary.” Hausknecht and like-minded people also say that crime victims should not receive special treatment simply because they identify with a particular social group.
Patricia Todd, representative from the Alabama State Legislature, says, “What I hear from opponents, mostly Republicans, is that a crime is a crime, and it shouldn’t matter who the victim is.”
Providing these additional protections, opponents say, favors small groups of people. According to literature from Focus on the Family, “Hate crimes provide one class of victims more protection than another.” That is, for example, no single murder should be declared worse than another murder just because of certain aspects of the victim. Hausknecht says, “It’s un-American. It elevates certain classes of people for more protections…it violates all of the principles of equal protection that we’re used to being governed under in this country.”
Proponents of hate crime laws counter this logic, saying that intent has traditionally been considered in judgment of crimes in America – pre-meditated, first-degree manslaughter is distinguished from accidental vehicular homicide. They say that hate crimes do not only affect the actual victim, but rather, the effects of the crime, including fear of persecution, extend to the entire community of people in that social group. Hate crimes have dangerous psychological consequences for not only the victims, but also anyone like the victims.
Opponents of hate crime laws are also troubled by the vagueness surrounding what qualifies a crime as a hate crime. It is difficult to prove the motives of a perpetrator and attribute them to a bias against the victim unless discriminatory slurs are exchanged or symbols of hatred are present.
Including sexual orientation in these laws causes further issues for groups who do not support the legislation. They argue that sexual orientation is not a visible, definite characteristic of a person because, according to Focus on the Family, “It is based on actions, not appearance or place of birth.” They feel race and ethnicity have more legitimate arguments for inclusion than sexual orientation, and religion merits protection because of the First Amendment, which provides freedom of religion rights.
Furthermore, they also cite anti-gay hate crimes as a small, localized problem, with Focus on the Family referring to it as “a phantom ‘epidemic’ hyped by special interest groups,” and say that it does not require valuable federal resources to fix. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ Uniform Crime Report, of the 9,535 hate crimes reported in 2007, 1,512 of these were instances where the victim was targeted for his or her sexual orientation. These cases constituted 15.9 percent of the total number of reported hate-related incidences and were third in frequency only to crimes based on race (52 percent of those reported) and religion (17.2 percent of those reported). Despite this, many conservatives feel that these numbers, which include very few murders, hardly indicate a nation-wide epidemic of bigoted violence toward gays and lesbians.
However, gay rights groups assert that these statistics cannot fully communicate the scope of the problem. Many violent, bias-motivated crimes go unreported because of the poor statistics collection system in place, and many believe that a disproportionate amount of those that go unreported are based on the victim’s sexual orientation. According to the Human Rights Campaign, a national organization that works for legal equality for LGBT people, “It is widely recognized that violent crimes on the basis of sexual orientation often go unreported due to fear and stigmatization.
Questions of Constitutionality
One of the most common criticisms of hate crime laws is that enacting them has the potential to stifle free speech. Hauskenecht comments, “It punishes thought, which in America is always dangerous. Once you start punishing ‘thought crimes,’ you’re really on a slippery slope to prosecuting speech and hate speech.”
Opponents point to Title 18 of U.S. Code, which says, “Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.” This, they interpret, could mean that if a preacher condemns homosexuality as immoral in a sermon, and a member of the congregation murders someone for being gay and then blames it on the preacher’s sermon, the preacher could be held as legally responsible as the congregation member for inciting or inducing the hate crime.
Although they recognize that this is the extreme of what could happen if the LLEHCPA was passed, critics assert that even the possibility of religious leaders being punished for speaking against homosexuality is a significant challenge against the First Amendment. This “chilling effect,” they say, could lead to a national denunciation of religious beliefs.
Those who support the new, inclusive law counter these statements, saying that the LLEHCPA exclusively punishes violent actions, not thoughts, opinions or speech – even hate speech. Religious fundamentalists are still free to picket gay pride rallies, preach about the “sinful” ways of homosexuals and otherwise discredit the LGBT community. Only when these expressions become violent actions are they criminalized.
The federal bill makes considerations that target these concerns of constitutionality and specifically address any issues with freedom of speech.
The House version of the bill details, “Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses, of, the First Amendment to the Constitution.” The Senate version states these rights even more explicitly: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities…including the exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment and peaceful picketing or demonstration.”
The House version further discusses, “In prosecution for an offense under this section, evidence of expression or associations of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial, unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense.” That is, lawyers may not use a defendant’s past history of prejudice in order to prove bias in a crime. For example, if a defendant who has written books condemning homosexual behavior attacks a gay man, the defendant’s history of speech against homosexuality cannot be used against him in court.
These considerations do little to appease some opponents of the bill, who maintain that prosecuting hate crimes, especially those motivated by the victim’s sexuality, will eventually lead to legal prosecution of anti-gay public statements. Hauskenecht even calls the clauses in the LLEHCPA that address free speech concerns “a fig leaf to cover up all of the flaws in the bill.”
Pushing for State Legislation in Alabama
Even if the LLEHCPA passes federally, it is still important for advocates to push for state-level legislation. The state-level laws would reinforce the federal law and ensure that there are no questions of whether an attack motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation should be prosecuted as a hate crime.
Thirty-two states in the country already include sexual orientation as a protected category in their hate crime laws, but the other 13 states with similar legislation do not include crimes based on sexual orientation (five states – Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Wyoming – do not have hate crime laws at all).
Alabama is one of these 13 states with legislation concerning hate crimes but no protections for sexual orientation. Despite this, recent developments in the state’s legislature indicate that sexual orientation may soon be included as a category in the preexisting laws.
Rep. Alvin Holmes, a Democrat in the Alabama state legislature, has continually introduced bills to incorporate sexual orientation for several years. In Alabama’s present hate crime legislation, people receive harsher penalties if their actions are deemed motivated by the victim’s race, religion, ethnicity or disability. His amendment attempt last year, Alabama House Bill 829, passed out of the House by a vote of 46 to 44 and was subsequently referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee approved it in early May, but when the legislature adjourned on May 19, the bill died.
In February of 2009, Holmes introduced a similar bill, Alabama House Bill 533, which was approved by the Alabama House on April 23. It was subsequently introduced in the Senate and referred to committee, which approved it on May 6. Movement on the bill in the Senate is forthcoming, but as the number of meeting days in the legislative session dwindle, the hate crimes bill looks less and less likely to be voted on at all. Dr. Bob Palmatier, Chairman of the Board of Equality Alabama, a gay rights organization in the state, predicts, “It’s too late for the Senate to actually act on it.” He notes the Alabama State Legislature’s repeated unwillingness to act, commenting, “The easiest thing to do without having to vote against it is to say that they don’t have time.” That is, Palmatier insinuates, the legislature is not yet willing to officially make sexual orientation a legally protected category.
Homophobia and the Culture of Silence
Despite the probable failure of the inclusive bill in Alabama, it is irrefutable that over the past few years, the state has experienced a shift in its attitudes toward gays and lesbians, mirroring a trend of increased acceptance across the U.S. As recently as three years ago, fiercely anti-gay legislation and public condemnation of homosexuality by elected officials was rather commonplace in Alabama. In April of 2005, some lawmakers proposed to ban books by gay authors or featuring gay characters from public school libraries, and 2002, Roy Moore, the then-chief justice of Alabama’s supreme court, deemed homosexuality “abhorrent, immoral, detestable,” and “an inherent evil” that “should never be tolerated.”
One of the first signs in a shift to a less condemning culture in the state was the election of Patricia Todd to the Alabama House of Representatives in November 2006. She is the first openly gay elected official in the state’s history. Since her election, state lawmakers have not introduced any anti-gay legislation.
This is not to say that the residents of Alabama and other states with similar ideologies have overcome homophobia. Homophobia, or an extremely negative attitude toward homosexuals that often manifests itself in physical violence, social discrimination or general hostility, is still very much an issue in the state. The fact that hate crime laws exist in most of these states but do not include considerations for sexual orientation symbolizes a history of homophobia throughout the traditionally conservative south.
With respect to homosexuality, Alabama is very much enshrouded in a culture of silence, where any sexual orientation other than straight is not discussed. Dr. Moira Amado-McGittigan, the executive director of Bay Area Inclusion, a community action group in southern Alabama, says, “The most common form of discrimination you see is silence…it’s very much a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. The biggest threat that I see is that people don’t talk about it.” Gays are barely visible in the state, often because they feel like coming out will threaten their pride, their job and, in extreme cases, their safety. With so few gays and lesbians discussing the realities of homosexuality, and even fewer heterosexuals mentioning it in anything but a negative way, gay rights issues vanish from the cultural radar, and any attempts to normalize homosexuality are quashed.
Twenty-five-year-old Alabamian Zach Childree’s coming-out story demonstrates the state’s culture of silence. “A lot of people from Alabama think that homosexuality is something that happens outside of the south, and it is not talked about,” he affirms, reflecting, “Realizing I was gay was almost heartbreaking for me because I was always told that it was something you should never be.” In high school Childree told his deeply religious parents that he was gay several times, but each time he did so, they pointed to damning Bible verses and passed off his feelings as a temporary phase.
Then Childree departed his small hometown of Hatchechubbee when he went to college, enrolling in Auburn University at Montgomery. There, he wrote a column called “Gay Like Me” for the college’s student newspaper. Word about his journalistic endeavor traveled back to his parents, and Childree spent the winter break of his freshman year in a tense household. “For that entire holiday,” he says, “we didn’t talk about it. It was there – it was the elephant in the room – but it was something you didn’t talk about. It was something we didn’t talk about.”
When classes resumed and Childree returned to school, he received a package from his parents. The package contained the title to his car, his birth certificate, his student loan information, his Social Security card and a letter from his mom: Childree was no longer welcome in his parents’ house because of his sexuality.
“I would love to say that my story is special and unique and that it doesn’t happen to other kids,” Childree says about his situation. “But it does. Kids get kicked out of their houses very often in Alabama when they come out.”
Now Childree is preparing for graduation from Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Ala., where he will earn a degree in print journalism. He continues to write about gay rights issues and equality disputes for his personal blog and college newspaper. His relationship with his parents remains strained, and, he says, “I still haven’t been back to their house. We’ll have passive-aggressive conversations…there’s still this sense that there’s something we need to talk about, and we’re not talking about it.”
Religious Indoctrination
Much of Childree’s parents’ hesitancy to accept their son’s sexual orientation stems from their rapt religious devotion, a common theme throughout the “Bible Belt” southern states, which includes Alabama. Religion plays a dominant role in the lives of many denizens of the south, and churches command a huge presence. The most popular religions are Christian denominations and evangelical faiths, and in the past few years, Southern Baptist and Pentacostal religions, specifically the radically conservative Assemblies of God, have seen increases in membership and visibility. According to Amado-McGittigan, “Before you’re asked what kind of work you do, you’re asked what church you go to…spiritual identity is very much a part of personal identity in the deep South.”
This fact underscores much of the homophobia in Alabama. In this Church-dominated state, homosexuality is considered a sin. If community members discuss sexual orientation at all, it is usually to quote certain verses in the Bible that some have interpreted to criminalize homosexuality, equating gays and lesbians with murderers, thieves and liars. The anti-gay stances generally stem from the belief that sex is to be used solely for reproductive purposes, so since two men or two women cannot conceive children, they should never engage in sexual behavior; if they do, they have transgressed God’s moral laws.
This overwhelmingly universal perception that homosexuality is sinful in religious communities results in cripplingly poor self-image and confidence for those who do identify as gay or lesbian. These people often attempt to reconcile their homosexuality with their religious beliefs, but because of the rigid, unwavering positions of many religious institutions, they feel that they are forced to either accept their sexuality and reject their faith or adhere to their faith and stifle their sexuality.
Those who choose the latter typically struggle with internalized homophobia, or disgust for one’s own homosexuality. Amado-McGittigan reasons, “If you’re told that you’re an abomination before God in a place that holds up spiritual connections very highly, you don’t have much self-esteem. Gays often feel that they deserve less, and their relationships are compromised. There’s a lot of self-destructive behavior.”
Corey Harvard, who has lived in Mobile, Ala. his whole life, perfectly epitomizes the effect that the indoctrination of the Church can have on gay teenagers. Growing up, Harvard was deeply religious, more so even than the members of his immediate family, who raised him in the Pentacostal faith. Harvard’s devotion to his faith, shown in his participation in his church’s worship band and steadfast knowledge of the Christian scriptures, indicated to many of his peers and family members that he would go on to become a pastor.
In his early teenage years, however, Harvard began noticing a same-sex attraction, which horrified him because he had always been told that homosexual attraction was punishment for wrongdoing. Harvard reflects, “I remember the preacher referring a lot of times to homosexuality like it was the eleventh commandment: ‘thou shalt not be gay.’ It’s not treated as one of the sins…it’s treated as the ultimate sin, the trump card of things that are bad.”
To cope with these unwanted emotional and sexual feelings about other males, Harvard turned to his religion. He says, “I would pray about it because I thought it was part of a sinful lifestyle.” Over time, he grew to accept that his homosexuality did not stem from the internal presence of an evil spirit or demon; rather, he discovered that it was a natural, intrinsic part of his life that he could not pray away.
But for Harvard, self-acceptance was not synonymous with a carefree psychological state. Discovering that he was gay while feeling betrayed by the anti-gay sentiments of the Church, Harvard grappled with heavy introspective questions. “I had a genuine spiritual battle,” he says. “My life went from entirely believing in everything I was fed by my pastor and the other spiritual leaders of my church to not believing in anything; they got it wrong about my sexuality, so what else did they get wrong? My whole belief system was crumbling to pieces.”
In the months prior to “coming out” of the proverbial closet, when he was a sophomore at University of South Alabama, Harvard was paralyzed with fear about how his loved ones would react. “I went through a semi-suicidal phase where I would have rather not dealt with life at all than deal with the torment of coming out to my family,” Harvard says. In the spring of his sophomore year, he had no motivation to work or study, rarely attended classes and generally detached himself from his usual world.
Harvard did eventually overcome his fears and come out to his parents, when he was 19, and they reacted better than he had anticipated, but homosexuality is still difficult to discuss with his father. In some ways, Harvard says that his father has accepted his son’s sexuality, so long as references to boyfriends or other gay friends are limited. This, it turns out, is difficult, since Harvard has been steadily, exclusively dating a boyfriend, 21-year-old Cory Samz from South Alabama University, for over a year. Harvard’s father remains unaware of Samz’s intimate relationship with his son.
Today the 21-year-old Harvard still has intense qualms about coming out to his extended family, who follow the Pentacostal faith quite diligently. “If my father’s family knew about me,” Harvard says, “They would say that I need to be exorcised, that there was a spirit in me…their solution would probably be to gather around me and put their hands on me for several days” in order to expel the demon and affirm Harvard as a heterosexual. Despite these fears, in early April Harvard listed himself as “interested in men” and “in a relationship” on his Facebook profile, which for him is a symbolic step of coming out.
Harvard’s coming-out experience, aside from the ultimately positive ending, is the norm in states like Alabama, where religion weaves its way into almost every facet of residents’ lives. The fact is that many people of faith misunderstand homosexuality, and few are capable of moving beyond their disapproval of gays and lesbians in order to accept the person as a member of their religious community.
Harvard explains, “Most people still think it’s a lifestyle choice…a willful act of deviance, not a struggle. They don’t think of their intolerance as ostracizing a person, they think of it as ostracizing a nasty lifestyle. It forces of a lot of gays into the mindset that you’re either gay and you’re actively gay, or you’re a Christian – one or the other.”
The Landslide Effect?
It appears that the largest hesitation from people who oppose including sexual orientation in protections against hate crimes stems from the fear that ceding on the hate crimes and discrimination issue will pave the way for the expansion of other “special rights” for the LGBT community. Conservative organizations often assert that making sexual orientation a protected category could lead to legislative acknowledgement of gays in other areas.
According to literature from Focus on the Family, “Laws develop incrementally with each one preparing the way for subsequent statutes or activist court decisions. We must look at each proposed law not only for its immediate effect but also for its long-term implications. The problem with hate crime legislation is that it will inevitably result in ‘sexual orientation’ becoming a protected category against which no one can offer an alternative view.”
This “landslide” or “snowball” effect is nearly always at the root of the debate where gay rights legislation is concerned. Lucas explains the stance of opponents further: “If we say that we can apply a protected minority status to gender identity and sexual orientation, then it’s saying that it’s something benign that has no political and moral underpinnings.” Conservative and religious groups, therefore, are unwilling to surrender their opinions of morality on behalf of the American LGBT population.
Thus, the key problem is that opponents of gay rights simply do not believe that non-straight sexual orientations are natural and biological. Even after documentation from the American Psychological Association that have suggested the normality of homosexuality, many people still consider being gay a choice, and a sinful one at that. Tragically, it seems that until these groups accept that gays cannot deny their homosexuality just as straight people cannot deny their heterosexuality, they will argue that sexual orientation-based prejudice is justified.
Regardless of this debate, there is a documented, irrefutable history of people being violently attacked or personally discriminated against for their actual or perceived identification as a member of the LGBT community. Advocates say that this history of hate crimes directed toward sexual minorities coupled with the fact that other historically persecuted social minorities – racial, ethnic and religious – are legally protected asserts the need for sexual orientation to be included as a protected category in legislation.
Childree says of the current federal laws, “It’s a way of saying that these social groups are worthy of protection against hate crimes, but not you – it is a way of keeping gay and lesbian people in a position of second class citizenry.”
Harvard echoes these sentiments, explaining his feelings about living in a state where hate crime laws do not cover sexual orientation, “You don’t feel like your government cares enough about you to enforce your safety. Even if the authorities believe that homosexuality is a sin, the fact that it’s enough to make some people act physically should be enough.”
If President Obama follows through on his promise to ensure passage of the Matthew Shepard Act, a possibility that looks increasingly likely as the legislative process continues, the LGBT community will experience its first official success in federal recognition.
Of course, including sexual orientation in hate crimes protections would in no way serve as a panacea for anti-gay discrimination. This prejudice is something that may always be a presence in America, which is marked by a long history of homophobia; laws will not automatically change long-standing social opinions. However, unanimous protection of sexual orientation in these laws would be a gigantic step forward in the process of achieving equality for LGBT Americans. It could serve as an important landmark in the gay rights struggle; a signal of a potential future for a country where people are not persecuted for being different, where the government does not allow for the prolongation of bigotry, and where the eleventh commandment is finally repealed.
