I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, this bill deals with violent crimes committed against victims who are singled out solely because someone doesn't like who they are.

Violent attacks because of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability often cause serious injury or death. They are more serious than a normal assault because they target not just an individual, but an entire group. They spread terror to all members of the group and often deter them from exercising their constitutional rights, sometimes for simply walking down the wrong street.

The only question for Members is whether they believe that singling out a person for a crime of violence because of his or her race or religion or because any other trait is sufficiently heinous to merit strong punishment.

For many years, Mr. Speaker, Congress debated what were known as the Federal lynching laws. They were designed to deal with the widespread practice of lynching primarily African Americans. There was staunch resistance to those laws here in Congress. For three decades, they did not pass while thousands were lynched. We heard many of the same arguments then that we are hearing today. That was not a proud period in our Nation's history. Today, we can do the right thing. I hope we can agree to do so.

Under current law, the attackers of someone like Michael Sandy of Brooklyn, who was attacked simply because he was walking down a street and he was gay, could not be prosecuted for a hate crime because, under existing law, only victims targeted because they are engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting, are protected. This bill expands the definition to cover all violent crimes motivated by race, color, creed, national origin, et cetera.

This is not an issue of free speech. This bill deals only with crimes of violence in which the victim is selected with his or her status.

The law routinely looks to the motivation of a crime and treats the more heinous of them differently. Manslaughter is different from premeditated murder, which is different from a contract killing. We all know how to make these distinctions. The law does it all the time. We ought to do it here; we ought to say that crimes of violence motivated by one's status are particularly heinous and ought to be treated as such.