Anti-hate law shifts to debate on gays - Controversy over provision threatens bid to protect more victims, boost federal authority

Anti-hate law shifts to debate on gays - Controversy over provision threatens bid to protect more victims, boost federal authority
By Howard Witt
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

HOUSTON - Back in April, despite everything he had gone through, it looked as if David Ritcheson was finally going to get a happy ending.

The 18-year-old high school senior from suburban Houston had been savagely assaulted in a 2006 hate crime, apparently targeted because he was Mexican-American, by two youths who tried to carve a swastika into his chest, burned him with cigarettes and kicked a plastic tube from a patio umbrella into his rectum, rupturing his internal organs.

But after 30 surgeries and months in the hospital, Ritcheson had healed enough to testify before Congress in favor of expanding the federal hate crimes law to cover more victims and make it easier for the Justice Department to investigate such cases.

Less than three months later, however, Ritcheson was dead. Still tormented by his ordeal, he committed suicide by jumping from a cruise ship into the Gulf of Mexico on July 1.

And the hate crimes law Ritcheson had pushed for has collided head-on with a controversy that had nothing to do with the teenager: the nation's bitter cultural fight over legal rights for homosexuals. The legislation, passed by the House and pending in the Senate, faces strong opposition from conservatives, some religious leaders and the White House.

Many of the critics are opposed to a provision that would extend the federal hate crimes law, which currently applies to crimes motivated by racial, religious or ethnic bias, to include violent attacks against victims based on their gender identity or sexual orientation, thus creating a new class of specially protected citizens.

"This divides America, by making some groups more important than others," said Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from east Texas. "When you say a transvestite with gender-identity issues is more important than the student victims at Virginia Tech, you don't unite us, you divide us."

Freedom of speech

Conservatives across the country have been struggling for nearly two decades to block the expansion of legal rights for gays, usually on moral or religious grounds. But now the opponents of the proposed hate crimes law are raising a new and novel argument: that the law could muzzle the freedom of conservative religious leaders to speak out against homosexuality.

They contend that a preacher could face criminal liability if a follower were to go out and commit a crime against a gay person after listening to a fiery sermon denouncing homosexuality.

"What I'm talking about is my right to preach what I believe," said Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., who joined three dozen black pastors to buy a full-page ad in USA Today denouncing the proposed federal hate crimes law. "We preach love and acceptance, but I don't believe the Bible condones gay lifestyles. Yet the way these laws would be invoked would be that whoever is a commander or director of this kind of action can be brought up on the same charges as the actual perpetrator of a crime."

Proponents of the expanded hate crimes law dismiss such concerns as exaggerations and say that nothing in the legislation would infringe on freedom of speech.

"For ministers to say that on Sunday morning they are going to get arrested because they make a speech against homosexuality is an unfair assessment of the law," said Martin Cominsky, Houston regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. "It's not about thought, it's not about speech. The law only comes into bearing against someone who takes a violent action."

On the books now

More than 30 states, including Illinois, have passed hate crime laws that include additional penalties for crimes committed against victims based on their sexual orientation.

Current federal law adds a sentence increase up to life in prison only for violent crimes motivated by racial, religious or xenophobic bias, and it limits the involvement of federal investigators to cases involving victims who were engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting, when they were attacked.

The bill approved by the House, on a vote of 237-180, and a similar measure pending in the Senate would extend coverage for gay victims and also broaden the circumstances under which state authorities could seek assistance from the FBI and the Justice Department in hate crime investigations.

The latter provision was the reason Ritcheson said he decided to testify before Congress. Ritcheson apparently was targeted because he was Hispanic, not gay, but his case did not qualify for federal intervention because the assault occurred at a private residence.

"Despite the obvious bias motivation of the crime," Ritcheson told a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, "it is very frustrating to me that neither ... the Justice Department nor the FBI was able to assist in the investigation of my case because the crime did not fit the hate crime laws."

Ritcheson's two assailants were convicted of aggravated sexual assault for the April 2006 attack, which occurred at a back-yard party in the Houston suburb of Spring. One attacker, David Tuck, 18, a skinhead who had previously been arrested in racially motivated assaults, received a life sentence; the second assailant, Keith Turner, 17, was sentenced to 90 years in prison.

But even though there was evidence that Tuck yelled "White power!" during the assault on Ritcheson, Harris County prosecutors opted not to charge the two under Texas' hate crime law, because under the circumstances of the case it would not have offered any additional sentence.

Psychological scars

Ritcheson sounded optimistic about his future during his April testimony, telling the House committee that "my best days still lie ahead of me."

But there were signs that the teenager, who spurned psychological counseling after the attack, remained deeply scarred by his ordeal. Ritcheson told the Houston Chronicle that he continued to feel degraded by the attack and the description of him as the "pipe assault victim."

"I shouldn't care what people think," he said, "but it's like everyone knows I'm 'the kid.' I don't want to be a standout because of what happened."

Civil rights groups say that kind of long-lasting humiliation is felt by many hate crime victims who are targeted because of such deeply personal characteristics as their race, faith or sexual orientation. And it's why proponents say the federal hate crimes law should be expanded to cover attacks against gays.

Bias crimes motivated by the sexual orientation of the victim accounted for 14 percent of the more than 7,100 hate crime incidents recorded by the FBI in 2005, the latest year for which such statistics are available.

"Hate-motivated violence against members of the gay, lesbian and transgender community continues to be a pervasive problem in this country," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the largest gay-rights groups lobbying for the new federal hate crimes law. "But there's nothing in this legislation that says that an individual's freedom of speech would in any way be curtailed."

Michael Marcavage, leader of a conservative Christian anti-gay group called Repent America, remains unconvinced. Marcavage and several followers were arrested in 2004 while staging a protest march outside a Philadelphia gay and lesbian street festival, charged with ethnic intimidation and violating Pennsylvania's hate crimes law.

Although a judge later dismissed the charges and cleared the group of any wrongdoing, Marcavage said he believes the incident foreshadows how zealous prosecutors could wield an expanded federal hate crimes law against religious leaders.

"The lawmakers in Pennsylvania said that the state hate crimes law would not apply to pastors, to people sharing their faith, but here we have an example of exactly that," Marcavage said. "People say these hate crimes laws only apply to violent acts against gays. Well, we committed no violent acts. This is how the abuse happens."

- - -

State laws

Number of states with hate crimes laws that cover attacks motivated by:

*Racial, religious or ethnic bias: 44

*Anti-gay bias: 31

*Transgender/gender identity bias: 10

*Age bias: 12

*Political affiliation bias: 4

Source: Anti-Defamation League

----------

hwitt@tribune.com