hate crime bill

U.S. House passes hate crime bill that Bush opposed | Reuters:

'via Blog this'

I hadn't paid much attention to politics until recently. I've been preoccupied with trying to keep my life together as everything around me fell apart. Then I decided to find out why things fell apart. So far, my research is leading me to the Bush Administration. All these rights we were told we had went down the drain when Bush Jr. became president. I haven't caught myself to what is presently going on, yet. I see, though, that at least one wrong was remedied with the new president. The hate crime bill had been vetoed by Bush because it included gay people. Being a Christian, he didn't think gay people deserved to be protected from violent crime. Church and state are supposed to be separate and all people have the same rights, don't they? Why teach kids that in school if it is not true. Maybe it isn't taught anymore. Who knows? Bush Jr. was in bed with the people who print lesson books, too. This news is late but I'm surely not the only one who didn't start paying attention until late in the game. Anyway, it's nice to see one wrong was made right:




On a vote of 249-175, the House passed and sent to the Senate a bill backed by the new Democratic White House to broaden such laws by classifying as "hate crimes" those attacks based on a victim's sexual orientation, gender identity or mental or physical disability.

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON | Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:57pm BST

The current law, enacted four decades ago, limits federal jurisdiction over hate crimes to assaults based on race, color, religion or national origin.

The bill would lift a requirement that a victim had to be attacked while engaged in a federally protected activity, like attending school, for it to be a federal hate crime.

House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer urged passage of the Federal Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.

"Hate crimes motivated by race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, and identity or disability not only injure individual victims, but also terrorize entire segments of our population and tear at our nation's social fabric," Hoyer said.

Bush had helped stop such a bill in the last Congress, arguing existing state and federal laws were adequate. But President Barack Obama asked Congress to send it to him to sign into law.

"I urge members on both sides of the aisle to act on this important civil rights issue by passing this legislation to protect all of our citizens from violent acts of intolerance," Obama said in a statement before the vote.