"The Matthew Shepard Act, as the bill is known in the Senate, would provide increased funding to state and local authorities to prosecute a wide range of hate crimes — ones motivated by race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It would also authorize the federal government to prosecute these crimes when states fail to do so. The biggest beneficiaries would probably be African-Americans, who make up the largest group of hate-crime victims. It would also help Hispanics, who have been increasing targets of anti-immigrant hatred. The bill’s opponents have focused on the protection of gay people, who were the victims in more than 16 percent of the hate crimes reported by the F.B.I. in 2007." —The New York Times on new hate crimes legislation [NYT]
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a) It still helps gays
b) No one knows the largest group of hate crime victims because gays in the past have under reported. One thoery is that this under reporting is due to fears about prosecution of the crime at the local level.
Epic fail.
Quotable statistics, based on FBI & CIA data and the 4% figure for the US LGB population that CNN got from exit polls at last November's elections (which is about as "official" a figure as I can find):
In 2007 there were 1010 hate crimes reported against Jews, just under 200 per million; there were 1433 hate crimes reported against LGBs, just under 120 per million; and there were 3275 hate crimes reported against African Americans, just under 80 per million. By contrast there were 59 hate crimes against Protestants, or 0.38 per million.
That means Jews are over 500 times more likely to be a victim of hate crimes than Protestants, and LGBs over 300 times more likely. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jews were one of the groups that voted most strongly against Prop. 8.
This could substantially increase support for the Matthew Shepard Act if proponents see it and take advantage of it.