A leading conservative opponent of the "hate crimes" legislation pending in the Senate says the country's top cop has yet to prove the bill is warranted.
Attorney General Eric Holder was the star witness yesterday at a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 909). Holder urged passage of the bill, which would allow federal prosecution of violence committed because of the actual or perceived gender, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity of the victim. Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition, who has argued that the legislation would have a chilling effect on the teaching of biblical principles regarding homosexuality, was in attendance at the hearing. She says the attorney general failed to adequately explain why the bill is necessary. "He was repeatedly asked about the need for...could he tell the senators where there was a failure among state and local officials in prosecuting hate crimes? Where was the epidemic? Where was the problem? Which states were systematically ignoring this problem? And he couldn't answer that," she recalls. Senate Republicans have requested a committee markup of the hate crimes bill, but Democrats' next move may be to attach the bill as an amendment to a "must-pass" piece of legislation, such as the Defense Authorization bill. According to Lafferty, Democrats do not have enough votes to pass S. 909 as a stand-alone measure.
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