The US Senate voted 65-33 yesterday to add gays and lesbians to ALREADY EXISTING federal hate crimes laws. That's a good thing, whatever your position on hate crimes laws - the laws are ALREADY on the books, all the Senate did yesterday was vote to add gays to the list of protected classes already covered by the law.
What concerns me here is that I fear this hate crimes vote is a cover-your-ass for Senators who want to vote for the anti-gay constitutional amendment. Now they claim they're not "pro-hate" because they actually voted for a "hate crimes" bill. Having said that, I'm fascinated that the White House appears scared to death by the gay issue now. Bush has always opposed adding gays to the federal hate crimes law, yet when asked about Bush's views on the legislation, a White House spokeswoman said:
"The president believes anyone who commits a violent act should receive swift and sure punishment, and that all violent crime is hate crime," she said. "The president believes all individuals should be treated fairly and equally under the law."Putting aside the fact that this is clear and utter BS - the president in fact believes that gays and lesbians should be treated as second-class citizens and defined as such in the US Constitution - it's pretty fascinating that he's now going all weasley on the hate crimes issue. This is particularly interesting as the religious right has been sending out action alerts for weeks claiming that adding gays to hate crimes legislation will cause the feds to arrest any preachers who quote Leviticus.
Finally, what this vote does show is that I was right, several months ago, when I proposed that we try to pass every single gay rights bill on the planet as a quid pro quo for the constitutional amendment - let the president and congress prove that they're not anti-gay. There's no way they'd accept the trade, but it would be fun to watch them explain why not.
