President Barack Obama on Oct. 28 signed a defense bill that includes a useless, senseless, unnecessary law – one that greatly expands the authority of the federal government to punish people who commit violent crimes against homosexual men, lesbians, transsexuals and transgendered persons.

The new law will certainly make activists representing these people feel better. But it won’t make them any safer, and isn’t that the point of our justice system?

Click here to tell the president you disagree with his decision to sign this bad bill into law.

The hate-crimes provision was attached to the 2010 defense authorization bill. It’s a common tactic to attach politically sensitive legislation to an appropriations bill that simply must pass, and we wouldn’t be complaining if a good bill became law in this way – although we would note that the strategy allows our elected leaders to deflect questions about why they voted for this stinker of a concept.

As we’ve told you, hate-crimes laws are best considered as a sentence enhancement for crimes perpetrated against a protected class of Americans. Criminals who assault or rape an African-American or Muslim, for example, could be prosecuted under a hate-crime law in most jurisdictions, if prosecutors believe the crime was committed out of racial or religious bigotry.

Now, it will soon be possible for the government to seek to add years to a prison sentence if they can convince a jury that a violent crime took place because the perpetrator believed the victim was gay, and was motivated by that fact. If you think this puts juries in the mind-reading business, you’ve discovered just a small aspect of what’s wrong with this bill.

The bill is named after Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old college student who was brutally killed in his home state of Wyoming 11 years ago, apparently because he was openly gay. The association of this bill is ironic because Wyoming doesn’t have hate-crime legislation of any kind, and because the perpetrators of this horrible crime, Aaron McKinney and Russell Anderson, are serving life sentences.
In other words, even if Matthew Shepard had been “protected” by a hate-crime law, it would not have made any difference in his case. The hate-crime specification is designed to lead to additional years in prison, and any incarcerated man or woman will tell you that life plus five years isn’t measurably different than life. We’ve also talked with enough crime victims to know that it’s little comfort to know that a rapist or murderer won’t see the light of day for, say, 30 years instead of 25.

In fact, as the homosexual publication Queerty pointed out, what’s most likely to change as a result of this legislation isn’t an increase in violent crime, but an increase in the number of reported “bias crimes.” Queerty quotes Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, “If you’re an individual who’s been the victim of a crime, why would you bother to report that you’d been the victim of a hate crime unless you thought that law enforcement officials were going to take it seriously? After an effective hate crime law has been passed, the numbers actually may go up. And that may be a very good thing, because it’s a much more accurate reflection of the national problem.”

There is no law-enforcement body anywhere that wouldn’t take a hate crime seriously, if that’s what it is. Our contention is that the existing laws and prison sentences dealing with these violent crimes is sufficient, or could easily become sufficient, without creating special protections that are only available to one group of people.

There’s also the fact that sexual behavior is just that – behavior, not an innate characteristic. The claim by homosexual activists that hate crimes are a civil rights issue falls apart on that very basis. It’s an argument that shouldn’t be dignified by serious debate, let alone federal legislation.

There is only one reasonable explanation for the passage of this bill – as payback for the homosexual activists who backed the current congressional leadership and President Obama. This is a political victory for the homosexual movement, and it would be crazy to think the movement will be satisfied with this achievement, dubious though it may be. Already there are plans within the Congress to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as well as the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Values voters have lost this battle, perhaps for good. But we can let the president know we disagreed with his decision to sign a defense bill that included this nonsensical, unnecessary provision.

Click here to send an e-mail to President Obama, expressing your dissatisfaction with the new federal hate-crime law.