Hate Crimes bill passes Senate

Long-awaited passage of bill tops a week of new LGBT gains at federal level

Suddenly, with little fanfare or notice, the signs of ''change'' for the LGBT community are beginning to appear in Washington. The Obama administration this week unveiled several new initiatives aimed at eliminating discrimination against LGBT people. The Ryan White AIDS assistance program was re-authorized for another four years. And Congress on Thursday gave final approval to a long-sought measure to help fight hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Senate voted 68 to 29 on Thursday evening, October 22, to approve the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010, a defense funding bill to which the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act had been attached in July. The House had given its final approval earlier this month.

There was some hostility expressed, even at this late point, for including the hate crimes provision in the funding bill. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said during floor debate Thursday that he ''strongly disagrees'' with the measure in the bill because it is ''non-germane, non-relevant.''

''What we are doing here is an abuse of the senate process,'' said McCain. The statement, of course, ignored years of non-germane amendments offered by Republican senators seeking anti-gay measures. But McCain insisted those past non-germane amendments were ''nothing of the magnitude'' of the hate crimes measure.

McCain said he was also opposed to the hate crimes measure itself because ''I do not believe an expansion of the federal criminal code is necessary to cover a certain class of citizens from – quote – perceived injustices,'' he said, gesturing the sign for quotation marks around his use of the words 'perceived injustices.'

McCain and Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) suggested the attachment of hate crimes to the DOD funding bill was an effort to avoid debate on the controversial measure. Sessions said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ''insisted'' the hate crimes measure be attached to the DOD authorization bill.

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, refuted the arguments, noting that the Senate has adopted hate crimes legislation on a DOD funding bill three times before and that it voted specifically on the current hate crimes measure during consideration of the proposal to attach it to the DOD funding bill.

The Senate first voted 64 to 35 on Thursday on a procedural motion allowing the Senate to proceed to consideration of the bill. Republicans voting for ''cloture'' included Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, Ohio Senator George Voinovich, and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. The lone Democrat voting against cloture was Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) did not vote.

The hate crimes provision accounts for about $5 million worth of funding inside the $681 billion defense bill.

The bill now goes to the president's desk, where President Obama is expected to sign it next week. Efforts to pass the measure in the past had been hampered by promises that then President George W. Bush would veto it.