SACRAMENTO, Calif. — On the first day of July (2007), Satender Singh was gay-bashed to death. The 26-year-old Fijian of Indian descent was enjoying a holiday weekend outing at Lake Natoma with three married Indian couples around his age. Singh was delicate and dateless — two facts that did not go unnoticed by a party of Russian-speaking immigrants two picnic tables away.According to multiple witnesses, the men began loudly harassing Singh and his friends, calling them “7-Eleven workers” and “Sodomites.” The Slavic men bragged about belonging to a Russian evangelical church and told Singh that he should go to a “good church” like theirs. According to Singh’s friends, the harassers sent their wives and children home, then used their cell phones to summon several more Slavic men. The members of Singh’s party, which included a woman six months pregnant, became afraid and tried to leave. But the Russian-speaking men blocked them with their bodies.

The pregnant woman said she didn’t want to fight them.

“We don’t want to fight you either,” one of them replied in English. “We just want your faggot friend.”

One of the Slavic men then sucker-punched Singh in the head. He fell to the ground, unconscious and bleeding. The assailants drove off in a green sedan and red sports car, hurling bottles at Singh’s friends to prevent them from jotting down the license plate. Singh suffered a brain hemorrhage. By the next day, hospital tests confirmed that he was clinically brain dead. His family agreed to remove him from artificial life support July 5.

Outside Singh’s hospital room, more than 100 people held a vigil. Many were Sacramento gay activists who didn’t know Singh personally, but who saw his death as the tragic but inevitable result of what they describe as the growing threat of large numbers of Slavic anti-gay extremists, most of them first- or second-generation immigrants from Russia, the Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union, in their city and others in the western United States.

In recent months, as energetic Russian-speaking “Russian Baptists” and Pentecostals in these states have organized to bring thousands to anti-gay protests, gay rights activists in Sacramento have picketed Slavic anti-gay churches, requested more police patrols in gay neighborhoods and distributed information cards warning gays and lesbians about the hostile Slavic evangelicals who they say have roughed up participants at gay pride events. Singh’s death was the realization of their worst fears.”

After a couple years of fundamentalist and Slavic Christian virulent anti-gay protests at almost every Sacramento gay event in the region,” said local gay rights activist Michael Gorman, “what the gay community has feared for some time has finally happened.”

The story above is excerpted from a longer article at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report. I quote it at length because I want readers to understand what hate crimes look like and then look at Peter Roskam’s stance on anti-hate crime legislation.

Satender Singh’s death appears to be a direct result of the hatred against gays that is being whipped up by Christian extremist groups. SPLC notes one in particular called Watchmen on the Walls, whose co-founder, Scott Lively, authored a book which claimed that gays were responsible for the Holocaust. SPLC has posted a video of Lively giving an alternate history of Singh’s death to an audience of followers in Russia in August. It is pretty chilling.

On November 19, the FBI released its annual Hate Crime Statistics report for 2006. According to a story on the release by the Washington Post, hate crimes reports were up by 8%. But as the Post has also reported, the reports are pretty spotty because the reporting by local law enforcement agencies is not mandatory. Mississsippi, for example reported no hate crimes at all.

Democrats in Congress have recently taken action to address the problem of hate crimes. H.R. 1592: Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 was introduced in the House in March, 2007. The bill seeks to offer Federal assistance to local law state and local law enforcement agencies in the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. Its provisions include:

• Defining a hate crime as “a violent act causing death or bodily injury because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability of the victim”.
• Amending the federal criminal code to make violent hate involving firearms, explosives or incendiary devices punishable by a fine or a prison term of up to 10 years.
• Providing funding to state and local programs combating hate crimes committed by juvenilles.
• Allowing the Attorney General to provide technical, forensic, prosecutorial, or other assistance in the criminal investigation or prosecution of hate crimes by state and local jursidictions.

Some Christian groups are portraying this legislation as an attempt to stifle free speech and free exercise of religion by Christians and other religious groups. Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council has produced a video denouncing the bill as an attempt to silence the church by legislating against “thought crimes”. Ironically, even many black pastors are opposing the law on the grounds that it will prevent them from preaching against immorality.

H.R. 1592, however, specifically provides that “that nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit expressive conduct or activities protected by the First Amendment.” The bill does nothing to prevent Christian extremists from preaching hatred. It only provides for prosecution of those who act out that hatred in a violent manner.

President Bush has expressed his opposition to H.R. 1592 and threatened to veto, citing the lack of any persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement”. Apparently gay men getting their heads bashed in is not persuasive. Anyone can look at the history of the struggle for black civil rights in the South and understand that local jurisdictions are often unwilling or unable to take steps to protect their citizens. Bush also cited the potential unconsitutionality of the legislation but given our long history of federal civil rights legislation, this excuse doesn’t seem to hold water. This appears to be an attempt to placate Christian extremists by refusing to extend the protections enjoyed by other citizens to gay people.

Predictably, Peter Roskam opted to support Bush’s stand, voting against passage when the bill came before the House on May 3rd. His web site appears to be silent on the issue. Apparently, it was not considered an issue of importance. The bill went to the Senate where it was attached to the 2008 defense authorization bill which is now in conference.

Peter Roskam owes an apology to his constituents for refusing to extend the protection of the Constitution to all of the citizens of his district. I hope that our Democratic candidates will take a strong stand against hate crimes.