Special Comment: Hates Crimes and the Defense Authorization Bill

by: Adam Bink

Sun Oct 04, 2009 at 19:30

So this week I heard from Barney Frank's office that the defense authorization bill would soon be voted upon in the House. The House already passed one version, H.R. 2647, but the approved Senate version (S. 1390) contained an amendment expanding the definition of hate crimes to protect the LGBT community. So, they are in conference. Frank was urging leaders in the LGBT community to ask activists to call their House member and support the passage of a bill with hate crimes protections in it.

In response, I heard a lot of disgust that this was the way hate crimes was going to be done, and a lot of selling-our-soul talk because a defense bill authorizes, well, military activities. I saw exactly one e-mail go out asking LGBT activists to call in support- from the Stonewall Democrats- and no blog posts or any other kind of organizing. Meanwhile, our opponents are organizing against it.

I wrote a little bit previously about a lot of grumbling in the LGBT community that why aren't our issues being voted on now now now, what good is a Dem majority and President, etc. etc. Now, after the Dem leadership and Frank have acted on hate crimes, the new griping is that it isn't done as a stand-alone bill. Seriously.

Okay, let's look at how this shapes up.

• To the Democratic leadership, there are a lot more pressing issues on the agenda, and if we're holding our breaths for a stand-alone hate crimes bill to be the very next thing on the agenda, or even considered this year, we'll be waiting quite awhile. In a time when every community has been waiting eight years to finally have a chance to move on an issue, there is a very crowded line. Passing it via the defense bill is the swiftest way to achieve this, and a chance I don't want to give up.

• The Senate takes forever to do anything, and is going to be at it on health care for the next month at least, then probably spend another several weeks voting on cap and trade, and the defense bill, and who knows what else that is of greater priority to the leadership and most Americans.

• Re whether a D majority means anything, there's an expectation out there that you can just pull stand-alone bills up and vote on them like flipping on a light switch when you have the majority. Doesn't work that way. Politics gets in the way, the fact that the Senate takes forever gets in the way, and frankly, so do more pressing issues, like getting the economy out of the trash heap, which took up a lot of debate time earlier this year. Republicans also get in the way- I thought by now DC would have a vote in Congress, until the Republicans attached a horrid amendment related to guns. Such is life.

  This, to me, emphasizes the importance of taking the chances when we get them, and this is a chance.

• For those who complain this is selling your soul to the devil or whatever, go read the bill. It covers everything from salaries of military employees to mental health care for their family members to establishing a voter registration office on military bases to buying staplers at the Pentagon. That's the reason the Senate version passed with 87 votes and the House version with 389. And that happens every year. You're conflating Bush's $87 billion for Iraq request with bills such as this. So your decision to pick up the phone or not will not mean more or less war. It could means no hate crimes protections if that amendment isn't included.

• The only plausible objection I could see is that if hate crimes is passed as a stand-alone will, it will make some headlines "Congress passes equal protections for gays" "Obama: gays deserve the same protections", etc. If it passes this way, somewhere buried in paragraph five of the story on the defense bill will be "Attached to the bill was an amendment..." So it won't get the attention it deserves. To me, this isn't worth waiting another who knows how many months, not to mention the real-life consequences, if we opt not to do it this way.

So this insistence on wanting it done as a stand-alone is absurd. Please do contact your member. I'd rather have a defense bill that will pass anyway do some good for the LGBT community.