Thank you for making the Mathew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act a Reality
Friends,
Thursday was a historic day for the LGBT community and for the nation. After over a decade of work the U.S. congress has passed The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act! President Obama has pledged to sign the Act into law next week. Our community has never experienced such a momentous victory and we know that it is your advocacy that enabled what seemed at one time an impossible obstacle to become a victory for all who care about justice. Please read Joe Solmonese’s powerful message about what this day means to our community.
The Act passed as an amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Bill, receiving strong bipartisan support in the House with a vote of 281-146 on October 8th and a vote of 68-29 in the Senate on October 22nd. Such strong support was not an overnight achievement. Members of Congress didn’t one day wake up and decide to do the right thing! This day was made possible because people like you, people of deep faith and commitment to justice, declared over many years that LGBT people, their families, their friends and their neighbors, deserved to live without fear of hate motivated violence.
Frederick Douglass wrote "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
As religious leaders you understand this. You spoke up to the radical right who declared that our “pulpits would be muzzled” if this legislation passed. You wrote letters to your congressional representative, you called them, and you met with them personally. You organized your congregations to do letter writing campaigns, you wrote op-eds and letters to the editor. You marched, you preached, you prayed, and many of you came to HRC’s Clergy Call in 2007 and 2009 to advocate for hate crimes protection in Washington.
Your words continue to resonate with us and on this momentous day, I invite you to watch the videos from religious leaders who spoke out in support of the Mathew Shepard Act in 2009 and read excerpts from Bishop Carlton Pearson’s Clergy Call 2007 hate crimes statement.
As we celebrate this legislative victory let us also reflect on the tragedies that bred the necessity of this legislation. Let us remember, as Rev. Dr. Traci West asked us to do at this year’s Clergy Call, Sakia Gunn, a fifteen year old African American lesbian, who was stabbed to death on the street’s of Newark, New Jersey by an adult male attacker yelling homophobic slurs. As Dr. West reflect, “like Matthew Shepherd, the life of this vibrant young black lesbian teenager, Sakia, must not be forgotten, nor the nature of her brutal murder. Homophobic crimes like these must be recognized and investigated as the heinous hate crimes that they are.” Now thanks to you, they will be.
You have blessed us with your advocacy and we are humbled and buoyed by your spirit for justice.
In heartfelt solidarity,
The HRC Religion and Faith Program,
Harry, Knox, Director
Sharon Groves, Deputy Director
Joanna Blotner, Coordinator