Whoever is in charge of the White House didn't even wait for the Hate Crimes legislation to pass before barking out a veto threat. The House bill adds "sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability" to the Hate Crimes law.
The White House, in a statement warning of a veto, said state and local criminal laws already cover the new crimes defined under the bill, and there was "no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement."
It also noted that the bill leaves other classes, such as the elderly, the military and police officers, without similar special status.
The House passed the bill by 237-180.
Currently federal law defines hate crimes as "acts of violence against individuals on the basis of race, religion, color, or national original."
Speaking of the "true intent of the bill" James Dobson warned his crazy listeners, "you may be guilty of committing a 'thought crime,"' if you read the Bible in a certain way.
I'm not sure what he means. Is Dobson the Homophobe having thoughts about acts of violence against gays whenever he reads the Bible?
The Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay rights group, said this federal intervention could have made a difference in the case of Brandon Teena, the young Nebraska transsexual depicted in the movie "Boys Don't Cry" who was raped after two friends discovered that he was biologically female and then murdered when local police did not arrest those responsible.
The Judiciary Committee cited FBI figures that there have been more than 113,000 hate crimes since 1991, including 7,163 in 1995. It said that racially motivated bias accounted for 55% of those incidents, religious bias for 17%, sexual orientation bias for 14% and ethnicity bias for 14%.
Gay Rights Bush Hate Crimes House Bill James Dobson News Politics Gay Veto
