Obama deserves praise for signing hate crimes law

As a legally blind lesbian, I celebrated on Oct. 28 when the president signed the Matthew Shepard and James Boyd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

This legislation, sought by gay and lesbian and other civil rights groups for more than 10 years, enlarges the definition of federal hate crimes to include those committed based on sexual orientation, gender or disability.

We, who are vulnerable because of who we love or our bodily differences, applaud these protections.

The bill is named in honor of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student who was beaten and murdered in 1998, and James Byrd Jr., a black man who was dragged to his death in Texas by three whites in the same year. The legislation strengthens already existing hate crimes protections, dating back as far as 1968. The new law also allows the Justice Department to assist in the prosecution of hate crimes motivated by bias against the victim’s disability, gender, or sexuality.

“No one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love,” President Obama movingly said. “No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are, or because they live with a disability.”

Here’s but one example of why some of us have been looking over our shoulders.

In 1999, Eric Krochmaluk, a man with intellectual disabilities from Middletown, N.J., was kidnapped, choked, burned with cigarettes and abandoned in a forest.

Some people worry that the recently signed hate crimes law will inhibit free speech by making it possible to prosecute an individual on the basis of his or her beliefs or speech. Yet, the legislation has provisions that ensure that prosecution would be based only on violent acts based on bias.

Disabled or gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people don’t want to hinder freedom of speech. We just don’t want to become the victims of hate crimes.

No one will be prosecuted simply for exercising the freedom of speech. And that is how it should be, even if that speech is ugly and bigoted.

But once someone commits a violent crime against us because of who we are, that person’s bigoted intentions ought to be penalized. Judges and juries, at sentencing, often take into consideration the frame of mind of the criminal. They should do so with these crimes, too. The community has a right to say that bigoted violence is especially corrosive.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act won’t end bias-based crimes. But it will put everyone on notice that such crimes will not be tolerated.

And for those of us who are vulnerable, it makes us a little less fearful today than we were yesterday.

That’s something that all Americans should celebrate.

Kathi Wolfe is a writer and poet. Her book “Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems” is published by Pudding House. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.