Rep. Conyers (D-MI) Introduces Bill That Includes Sexual Orientation for Federal Hate Crimes

On April 2, 2009 Rep. Conyers re-introduced H.R. 1913, "The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009," which was subsequently referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary, according to The Library of Congress.

Although the text of the bill is not yet available, the introductory remarks state that the bill will protect perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. The remarks cited some very disturbing FBI statistics...

Since 1991, the FBI has documented over 118,000 hate crimes. For the year 2007, the most current data available, the FBI compiled reports from law enforcement agencies across the country identifying 7,624 bias-motivated criminal incidents that were directed against an individual because of their personal characteristics. Law enforcement agencies identified 9,535 victims arising from 9,006 separate criminal offenses. As in the past, racially motivated bias accounted for approximately half (50.8 %) of all incidents. Religious bias accounted for 1,400 incidents (18.4 %) and sexual orientation bias accounted for 1,265 incidents--(16.6 %), followed by ethnicity/national origin bias with 1,007 incidents--(13.2%). While these numbers are disturbing, it is important to note that, for a variety of reasons, hate crimes are seriously under-reported.

Within the next few days, the full text of the legislation will be available here.