Democrats Kill Federal Hate Crimes Bill

The Democratic leadership in Congress quietly killed the Federal Hate Crimes bill yesterday, stripping it from the conference report of the Defense Authorization Bill, Pam's House Blend reports. The Washington Blade broke the story:

The decision kills the hate crimes bill for this year, but House Democrats, led by gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), are calling on the Senate to pass a freestanding hate crimes bill as early as February.

Senate Democrats had hoped to pass the Department of Defense authorization bill with the hate crimes measure intact, saying it was the best strategy for discouraging President Bush from vetoing the hate crimes measure, which Bush opposes.

House Democratic leaders, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), supported the Senate strategy, but a block of about 30 liberal Democratic House members threatened to join Republicans in voting against the combined defense-hate crimes bill, saying they could not support legislation advancing the president's Iraq war policies.

Interestingly, Barney Frank was behind this legislative twist in the failure of pro-gay legislation to pass the Congress.

Frank broke publicly this week with many of the nation’s gay advocacy groups by questioning their request that House members back continued funding for the Iraq war in order to support the hate crimes bill.

Frank voiced his concerns over the strategy pushed by Senate Democratic leaders to pass the hate crimes bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act as news surfaced late Wednesday that many House Democrats opposed to the Iraq war were prepared to vote against a combined hate crimes/defense bill.

[...]

“House Democrats tell me, ‘Of course I support the hate crimes bill, but don’t tell me to vote for the war,’” Frank said.

“They’re saying why are you asking me to vote for the war in order to vote for this,” he said.