Virginia State House – Photo: Farragutful, via Wikimedia.
The Virginia General Assembly has defeated a bevy of bills that deal with bias-motivated crimes, particularly those that target LGBTQ victims, even as the number of anti-LGBTQ homicides hit a record high last year.
Last Friday, the House Courts of Justice’s Subcommittee #1 defeated two bills dealing with so-called “hate crimes.” Del. Ken Plum (D-Reston) introduced a bill that would have added gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability to the categories of victims whose attacks can be recognized as hate crimes. That means that offenders can be charged with bias enhancements, or subject to harsher penalties, if prosecutors choose to pursue additional prison time on top of the underlying murder or assault charges.
Del. Rip Sullivan (D-McLean) introduced a separate bill that would have required the reporting of hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity to the Virginia State Police. Law enforcement authorities are already reporting such statistics to the FBI, and law enforcement authorities have consistently supported similar bills patroned by Sullivan during past legislative sessions.
Both Plum’s bill and Sullivan’s bill were defeated on party-line votes, 4-3, with Republicans voting to table them, in that subcommittee. Del. Les Adams (R-Chatham) was absent.
The Courts of Justice Subcommittee has not yet voted on HB 10 or HB 266, identical measures that combine Plum and Sullivan’s bills into one, but both are expected to be defeated on party-line votes.
Earlier in the session, the Republican-controlled Senate behaved similarly, defeating a bill patroned by Sen. Barbara Favola (D-Arlington) that sought to expand the classes of victims that are covered by Virginia’s current hate crime laws. The bill, which sought to add gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity to the hate crimes law, was defeated in the Courts of Justice Committee on a party-line 9-6 vote.
The General Assembly’s actions come at a time when anti-LGBTQ hate crimes are on the rise, constituting the third most common type of hate crime in the nation. A recent report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects found that there were 52 reported anti-LGBTQ homicides in 2017, the highest number ever recorded, and an 86% increase from the number of LGBTQ murders in 2016.
Recently, a jury convicted a man from Chester, Va., on federal hate crime charges after he assaulted a co-worker he thought was gay at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in May 2015. James William Hill III admitted to an Amazon manager and to police that he dislikes gay people, and that gay people should expect to be assaulted because of their sexual orientation, reports WRIC.
Hill could face up to 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced later this year. Ironically, though, Hill’s punishment would likely be less severe had he been charged with assault and prosecuted under the commonwealth’s criminal laws, due to the General Assembly’s refusal — and therefore, the commonwealth’s — to admit the existence of crimes motivated by anti-LGBTQ animus.
The United States Tennis Association, the national governing body for tennis in the United States, has quietly banned transgender athletes from competing in women's events.
As first reported by independent journalist Marisa Kabas in her newsletter The Handbasket, the USTA revised its "Player Eligibility Policy" page on October 25 with no prior warning or public announcement.
Under the revised policy -- which applies to all sex-specific junior and adult leagues, tournaments, and competitions, whether Olympic, professional, or recreational -- only athletes who meet the USTA's definition of a woman or girl may compete in events designated for women or girls.
Texas A&M University System regents unanimously approved a policy requiring each campus president to sign off on any course that could be viewed as advocating "race and gender ideology" or addressing sexual orientation or gender identity.
The policy defines race ideology as "attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity" or anything that "promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity rather than academic instruction." Gender ideology is defined as "a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex."
A California man has pleaded not guilty to a brutal attack that left a 57-year-old gay man in a coma after objecting to the victim’s Halloween costume.
Sean Wesley Payton Jr., 24, of Sacramento, is accused of assaulting Alvin Prasad around 1:30 a.m. on November 1.
Prasad had been out at Badlands, an LGBTQ nightclub, with his adult daughter, Andrea, on Halloween night. He was dressed in an 18th-century coat and hat, along with knee-high platform boots, a pink wig, and large white wings strapped to his back.
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