By Darius Kemp
In early May, the United States House of Representatives passed the Matthew Shephard legislation, by a margin of 75 votes, that would include sexual orientation into current hate crime laws on the federal level. A growing chorus of individuals has begun to hate the legislation instead of hating the horrible crimes of intolerance that people commit.
The bill now moves over to the Senate for serious consideration. However, the passage of the bill in the House has fueled the disturbing rhetoric of opponents to the bill, and in turn this has worried its supporters. Over the past few weeks the recriminations have begun on both sides.
Blog
May 27, 2009 - 9:00pm
We were honored to witness students from Shaw High School in East Cleveland, Ohio as they trained elementary school students to stand up to bullying. Last week, NIOT producer Kelly Whalen and I traveled to Cleveland to film Not In Our School segments at two local high schools.
May 20, 2009 - 9:00pm
Students from Palo Alto spoke passionately about their experiences dealing with ethnic and anti-gay slurs and cyberbullying at a Not In Our Schools event held at the Media Center last month. The school-community conversation focused on bullying and strategies for how to be an upstander. Here is a powerful example from the event.
A high school student talks about being the target of an ethnic slur on Facebook as part of a conversation about cyberbullying.
May 19, 2009 - 9:00pm
At one of the most diverse campuses in the nation, UC Riverside’s Hate/Bias Response Team has worked for the past three years toward creating a hate-free campus community. Made up of students, faculty, and representatives from a number of student services programs, the HBRT supports victims of hate incidents and hate crimes, and educates the campus about what hate crimes are and what students can do to fight against them.
Started in the summer of 2006, the HBRT convened to develop protocols for campus reporting of hate crimes and hate incidents. Student Development Educator and HBRT member Jen Miller said, “There wasn’t an event that got us started, a lot of people often think that we’re responding to some thing that happened. Instead, we wanted to be proactive and have students be aware of these resources.”
May 4, 2009 - 9:00pm
Patchogue Theatre buzzed with excitement as the community came together April 20, 2009, for an evening of performance dedicated to unity and inclusiveness, five months after a violent hate crime shocked the small community in Suffolk County, New York.