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LOU CHIBBARO J
Thursday, May 11, 2006
A bill that would have authorized the federal government to prosecute hate crimes against gay people died in the Senate on May 4 after Democrats yielded to Republican pressure against attaching the bill to legislation aimed at protecting children from sexual predators.
The Senate action was expected to prevent hate crimes legislation from moving forward this year, even though the House passed a separate hate crime measure last September.
Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) led a bipartisan effort to attach a gay-inclusive hate crimes bill to the Sex Offender Registration & Notification Act after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused to allow the Senate to vote on a freestanding hate crimes bill.
Frist, who opposes the hate crimes bill, responded to the Kennedy-Smith proposal by announcing last month that he would not allow the sex offender bill to come to the Senate floor unless Democrats agreed to a unanimous consent vote, which prevents any amendments from being considered.
Kennedy raised the stakes by invoking a Senate rule allowing him to place an indefinite hold on the sex offender bill. Kennedy said he would withdraw the "hold" and release the bill only if Frist agreed to let him introduce the hate crimes amendment as part of the sex offender legislation.
Conservative groups opposing gay rights, led by the Family Research Council, jumped into the fray, calling on Frist and other GOP leaders to hold firm in their opposition to the hate crimes bill.
Frist joined conservative groups in citing a "Dateline NBC" report on internet predators that target juveniles to stress what they said was a critical need to pass the sex offender bill.
Last September, the House passed a separate version of the sex offender legislation with a hate crimes bill attached to it, a development that drew praise from gay rights and transgender advocates. The House version also included gender identity as a protected category.
But the House version also included controversial provisions in the sex offender registration measure that drew strong opposition from civil liberties groups, including the ACLU. Some gay rights advocates also expressed concern that the hate crimes bill had been linked to what they called an "anti-civil liberties" sex offender registration measure.
With this as a backdrop, Kennedy came under pressure from both conservative and some liberal and progressive groups to release his hold on the Senate version of the sex offender registration bill.
Last week, Kennedy gave in, agreeing to drop his hold and allow a vote on the Sex Offender Registry & Notification Act.
The bill passed May 4 in a unanimous voice vote.
Eldie Acheson, director of Public Policy & Government Affairs for the Task Force, said the GOP’s block of Kennedy’s amendment was "no doubt the intolerant and regrettable bidding of its extreme right-wing base."
"The strong bipartisan votes in the House of Representatives adding an explicitly transgender-inclusive hate crimes amendment to a crime bill, and then passing that crime bill as so amended, makes clear that the support and votes for a clearly inclusive measure are indeed there in the House, and we believe that the same is true in the Senate," Acheson said in a statement.
In a statement released by his office, Kennedy blamed Republican leaders for delaying the sex offender bill, saying they should have agreed to allow the hate crimes language to be a part of the bill.
He noted that the hate crimes language would not have weakened or changed any of the provisions in the sex offender registration bill.
"The inclusion of the federal hate crimes laws is not inconsistent with the goals of the legislation to stop crime against children," Kennedy said.
"Hate crimes are a violation of everything our country stands for," he said. "They send the poisonous message that some Americans deserve to be victimized solely because of who they are. It’s especially important, though, to act on the sex offender issue. Communities need to know that registration systems work, so that these predators can’t keep slipping through the cracks under current law and continue their crimes."
Frist said on the Senate floor that the "Dateline NBC" series, "To Catch A Predator," presented a dramatic picture of how adults who stalk juveniles for sex through online chat rooms need to be brought to justice. He said the sex offender registration legislation would provide important help for law enforcement agencies to track sexual predators.
"It has been a long time," Frist said, in commenting on the delay by the Senate in passing the sex offender legislation.
"Several weeks ago on the floor I tried to get unanimous consent from the other side to agree to go to the bill unattached to other types of amendments unrelated to the registry itself, unrelated to these sexual predators," Frist said.
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