Barney Frank says… I don’t care if a bunch of liars like me or not…

barney-frank-superman-superdelegate For openly gay Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act was personal yesterday and he was ready to rumble in answering those members of congress who said protection for LGBT was not only unnecessary, but also argued that conservative religious groups and pastors could face criminal charges for speaking out against homosexuality or, at the very least, would be reluctant to state their views.

Hate crimes – as defined by the new bill – are those motivated by prejudice and based someone’s race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The bill, which passed 249-175, will provide a financial assistance to state and local authorities, with grants for investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. The federal government could also step in and prosecute if states requested it or we unwilling to exercise their authority.

Rep. Frank, said the bill would protect “people like me,” and he said he wasn’t asking for approval from people with whom he didn’t want to associate with anyway.

Answering those who said the protections were not needed, Franks said, “Let’s be very clear, Mr. Speaker. It is not the concept of hate crime protection that is controversial. We have had it and it has been administered. It is extending it to people like me, to those of us who are gay, to people who are transgender. And the assertion that there is no basis for protecting transgender people against violence, that’s Marxist in its oddity.

And I mean by that, of course, Chico Marx, who said at one notable point when Groucho caught him red-handed, ”Who are you going to believe–me or your own eyes?

The fact is that crimes against people who are transgender have been very serious. I know they are not always prosecuted as well as they should have been. But I do want to stress, the notion of hate crimes, of increasing the penalty because of the motivation for certain characteristics of the victim, has not been controversial on the Republican side. They have made no effort to change it.

If they were really motivated by what they claim to be saying, or what they are saying, then they would be for repealing hate crimes in general. They would be for repealing hate crimes based on race and age and other categories. It’s only when it deals with gay people. And because in some people’s minds saying that it’s wrong to assault someone who is transgender may mean that you have to show some respect for that person.

Well, let me reassure them. I do think that there ought to be hate crimes protection against gay, lesbian and transgender people. By that I mean that if there is a physical crime, actions that are otherwise criminal, the fact that it is based on that prejudice should count.”

Current law only permits federal prosecutions against crimes based on race, religion, color or national origin – and only when the victims are engaged in federally protected activity such as voting.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r111:25:./temp/~r111ik7qwS:e107573