The Senate’s 68-29 vote in favor of a $680 billion defense spending bill, which includes the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, came after the House approved the bill earlier this month.<\/font><\/p>\n "The answer to hate and bigotry has to be ultimately found in increased respect and tolerance for all our citizens," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "In the meantime, strengthening our hate crimes legislation to give law enforcement the tools they need is a necessary step."<\/font><\/p>\n Republicans contend that an expansion of the hate crimes definition should not be included in a defense spending bill. The bill allocates $130 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the fiscal year 2010, which began Oct. 1.<\/font><\/p>\n "Democrats have done a great disservice to the brave men and women of our Armed Forces today by using them as leverage to pass radical social policy," said House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio after the House passed the bill\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>><\/p>\n But there is another side to this story. Thirty four Republican Senators are so filled with hatred and intolerance for LGBT people that they filibustered defense spending and voted to deprive our troops of what they need rather than extend basic human rights to worthy citizens.<\/p>\n Here are the names of these GOP bigots:<\/p>\n Lamar Alexander, John Barrasso, Bob Bennett, Kit Bond, Sam Brownback, Jim Bunning, Richard Burr, Saxby Chambliss, Tom Coburn, Thad Cochran, Bob Corker, John Cornyn, Mike Crapo, Jim DeMint, John Ensign, Mike Enzi, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Judd Gregg, Kay Bailey Hutchison, James Inhofe, Johnny Isakson, Mike Johanns, Jon Kyl, George Lemieux, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, James Risch, Pat Roberts, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, John Thune, David Vitter, Roger Wicker<\/font><\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n What\u2019s next? Sheets and hoods?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s a win for the LGBT community that I fully support. The Senate approved legislation Thursday to expand hate crimes to include attacks based on a person’s gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability, sending the bill to President Obama, who is expected to sign it into law. The Senate’s 68-29 vote in favor of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"hate-crimes\"](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202009\/HateCrimeLawExpansionWinsintheSenate_2246\/hatecrimes.jpg\" "\\"hate-crimes\\"")
<\/a> The Senate approved legislation Thursday to expand hate crimes to include attacks based on a person’s gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability, sending the bill to President Obama, who is expected to sign it into law.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/a> I will admit that I complained loudly when the GOP regime attached unrelated amendments to \u2018must pass\u2019 bills, so I\u2019m not going to say that it\u2019s OK now. But Boner\u2019s hypocrisy amazes me, considering that the GOP regime was notorious for the same tactic. That said, I could not be more pleased for my LGBT friends that it passed and that they will finally get the legal protection that they and all Americans deserve.<\/p>\n\n