House sneaks sexual orientiation into hate crimes statute

Last month the House of Representatives passed the the Child Safety Act, a bill intended to increase penalties on sexual molesters of children (by the way, why is this a federal matter?). Perversely, as part of that bill, the House also passed an amendment to the federal hate crimes statute that makes hatred of homosexuals one of the categories of group animus that increase the normal penalty for a crime. Only the Senate and the president now stand in the way of the first-ever federal law making homosexuals a specially protected class. (Don Feder has a long column on this at this website, though the piece seems to have no permanent link.)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 20, 2005 12:19 AM | Send