President Barack Obama is set to sign the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 tomorrow, and tucked away at the end of a very long piece of legislation is an amendment to the bill known as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

How the two came to be paired together is a topic of another conversation, but the Shepard Act is long overdue by some 30 or 40 years at least, and many in the country are happy to see that it has made it this far.

Take a minute to read the story of Matthew Shepard. You can find a link to it online, at iowastatedaily.net.

The bill adds the terms “gender,” “sexual orientation,” “gender identity” and “disability” to the scope of the definition of the term “hate crime,” and offers resources to state and local law enforcement agencies to the tune of $15 million in order to empower them to team up with federal government officials in order to more effectively and ably combat perpetrators of these crimes.

In a statement released by the Family Research Council president, he claims that “by granting a special protection for a particular group, we diminish protections and thereby penalize everyone else,” and “this measure is about giving special rights based solely on sexual behavior.”

He goes on to applaud the convictions of the 146 Congressmen who voted in opposition to the bill, and goes on to say, “It violates the principle of equal justice under the law and also threatens to infringe on the free speech rights of the American people.”

Unfortunately, all people are not treated equally, and until they are, special attention must be paid in order to effectively apply the law to all.

The conservative right’s language seems to resemble something like what you might have heard in defense of slave owners and traders more than 150 years ago, but takes it a step further.

In the early 1800s, farmers and businessmen were simply afraid of losing their free laborers.

Perkins calls the legislation a “thought crimes” bill, but making the leap from defense of the defenseless to a free speech infringement seems a stretch to us.

Whether the future holds an America in which pastors can be prosecuted for hate speech, as Perkins claims, remains to be seen, but this bill attempts to defend, as so many pieces of legislation have in the past, a group of people in the United States that has endured cruel and unusual persecution by fellow citizens.

The wording of the bill is so clear, it’s hard to understand the jump to conclusions that would lead some in Congress to oppose the measure.

The bill defines the offender as some person who:

“Willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of any person.”

It goes on to include “kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to kill.”

Perkins argues that we need not pay special attention to the groups of people added to the bill, but we would argue that the attention is due.

In fact, it’s probably too limited in its scope.

It’s an unfortunate and tragic truth of the world and, still, of the United States that discrimination against particular persons for particular reasons exists.

And, in light of that fact, it’s important that the federal government step up to empower law enforcement officials to defend our neighbors.

So join us in congratulating the feds in having taken yet another important step forward in defending those who, at times and in some places, stand very alone.