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Loading ...Michigan hate crime law would include LGBT
11.17.2008 4:09pm EST
(Lansing, Michigan) Michigan’s lower house has moved to expand the state hate crime law to include all members of the LGBT community.
Currently, the state law covers race, color, religion, gender or national origin. The amendment would add protections for sexual orientation and expression.Some GOP lawmakers opposed the move, saying it would give special status, but Rep. Barb Byrum disagreed.
“This merely opens an avenue, opens that door for law enforcement to hold these people accountable,” she said as the bill passed the House. It still requires Senate approval and the governor’s signature before becoming law.
Michigan’s LGBT community has been trying to get the legislature to pass an expanded hate crime law for a decade.
In May, a study found that attacks on members of the LGBT community nationwide grew by 24 percent in 2007 over the previous year.
The 78-page report was prepared by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, with input from more than 30 of its members across the U.S.
The most sizable increases in anti-LGBT incidents in 2007 occurred in the nation’s heartland.
In Michigan, the number of reported incidents rose 207 percent to more than 200 attacks.
The report blamed the increase in Michigan on a three-year, high profile campaign against domestic partnership benefits.
In February 2007, the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned the trial court’s holding that public employers may offer domestic partnership benefits. The result has been the loss of benefits, such as health insurance, for thousands in Michigan.
Currently, the federal hate crime law does not include LGBT people.
The Matthew Shepard Hate Crime Act, named for the 21-year-old college student who was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Wyoming in October 1998, languishes in Congress.
The bill passed the House in 2007 and the White House threatened to veto it. In an effort to get around a veto, the Senate version was tied to the 2008 defense authorization bill. It passed but then went to conference where it was stripped out.
“Special status”, my foot. Unless they successfully make some sort of salient factual distinction between GLBT and other groups, opponents of this bill are basically stating (by default) that they believe ANY hate crime protection constitutes “special status” for the group in question. And I don’t see them making any attempt to distinguish us on the facts. They’re just scared to death to incite the ire of racial minorities and religious special interests – yet apparently, pissing off the queers is still acceptable. Can someone PLEASE explain to me how this remains the case in 2008?!?
As for the penalty enhancements themselves – they’re perfectly justifiable. Our criminal justice system already considers the motivations of an offender in numerous places – perhaps the most famous being the distinction between first- and second-degree murder. Society has made a policy judgment that individuals who kill in cold blood are more corrupt and dangerous overall than people who are incited to murder by a sudden emotional provocation.
Similarly, hate crime penalty enhancements reflect a social judgment that an attacker motivated by bias is more dangerous overall, since he’s proven that all it takes to incite him is a mere *encounter* with someone who belongs to a group he detests. He’s set off by the mere EXISTENCE of people who are unlike him – and, in my book, this greater danger to society justifies a greater sentence. It’s no “thought police” slippery slope, either; he’s free to hate all he wants, just not to translate that hate into the swing of a machete. Only CONDUCT is punished.