(Salem, Oregon) The Oregon State House of Representatives has unanimously passed a resolution calling on the United States Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

The 59-0 vote also condemned the recent brutal beating of two gay men at a Seaside, Ore. beach.  The two men, Samson Deal and Kevin Petterson, were on spring break March 22 when several men dressed in black approached them from behind and beat the pair into unconsciousness. 

After an initial review of the case, Seaside Police Chief Bob Goss announced that his department would be treat the beatings as a hate crime because the victims indicated that the assailants had yelled anti-gay slurs during the attack.

The Shepard Act passed the House of Representatives last month and adds sexual orientation to the list of categories covered under federal hate crime law. It currently is before the Senate, but committee hearings have not been set.

Just hours before the House vote, President Obama urged Congress to pass the bill.

” 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 – legislation that will enhance civil rights protections, while also protecting our freedom of speech and association,” the President said in a statement.

The legislation was named for Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old college student who was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Wyoming in October 1998. It would provide local police and sheriff’s departments with federal resources to combat hate violence.  

Gay rights groups have been fighting to have the legislation passed for over a decade.

Because there is no federal law mandating states and municipalities to report hate crimes, they are often underreported.  However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s own statistics, based on voluntary reporting, show that since 1991 over 100,000 hate crime offenses have been reported to the FBI, with 7,624 reported in 2007, the FBI’s most recent reporting period.  

Violent crimes based on sexual orientation constituted 16.6 percent of all hate crimes in 2007, with 1,265 reported for the year. In addition, while not captured in the federal statistics, transgender Americans too often live in fear of violence.