ABCNews.go.com – By Z. Byron Wolf
Senators voted Thursday morning to give the federal government more jurisdiction to prosecute hate crimes and included protections for gay, lesbian and transgender victims, attaching the measure to an annual defense policy bill.
Sixty Senators — just enough to override a Republican filibuster — voted to attach the Matthew Shepard Act, named for the gay Wyoming college student murdered in 1998, as an amendment to the 2008 Department of Defense authorization bill. The measure was sponsored by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Gordon Smith, R-Ore.
Kennedy argued this morning, in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, that the law is necessary because hate crimes are on the rise in the United States.