By Jennifer Vanasco

Last week, people gathered in a vigil in Florida to mark the place where 17-year-old transgender teenager Simmie Williams was gunned down.

A day after Williams was murdered, Melbourne Brunner, a gay man, was beaten severely only a few miles away, by a man who was taunting Brunner and his partner for being “faggots.”

Last week, too, vigils were held across the country to protest the murder earlier in February of Lawrence King, a gay 15-year-old Californian who was shot by a classmate because King asked him to be his Valentine.

Enough.

It is time to pass the federal hate crimes bill.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder. Lawrence King was 5-years-old when Shepard was robbed, pistol-whipped, tortured and left to die. The current hate crimes bill is named for him and it is already 11 years too late.

Williams and Brunner’s state of Florida includes sexual orientation in its state hate crimes bill, but not transgender people; King’s state of California includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

 But 17 states—including Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard was killed—include no such protection. And only 12 states (12!) protect transgender people.

A federal law would protect everyone.

The Matthew Shepard Act is a federal hate crimes bill that would authorize the Department of Justice to get involved in local hate crimes based on the victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability, whether or not the local police decided to investigate and whether or not the victim was engaged in a federally protected activity like voting.

Current law includes only race, color, religion or national origin.

The Matthew Shepard Act passed the House last session, and activists celebrated. Then it passed the Senate as an amendment to a defense bill, and there was jubilation. Many GLBTs think that this means it passed and will become law.

Not so.

In a last-minute bit of political maneuvering, a Senate committee stripped the Matthew Shepard Act from the defense bill, partly because it became clear they wouldn’t be able to override the White House’s threatened veto.

The bill hasn’t passed yet because some ministers on the right are worried that it would take away their “right” to hate speech in the pulpit, where they like to denounce homosexuals. That wouldn’t happen. They could go on denouncing all they like, though I wish they wouldn’t.

And some on the left don’t like it either, because they say that all crimes are crimes of hate, and that hate crimes laws just ignore the impact of regular old murders.

But the Matthew Shepard Act does more than send money and staff to local law enforcement agencies who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to investigate hate crimes.

It also would serve as a powerful symbol, which is what many of the best laws do. It is a symbol that says, “Enough.” It is a symbol that says, “We value gay people and transgendered people and women and disabled people enough to protect them.”

It is a symbol that says, “This society will not tolerate you hurting this person just because you are offended that he wears jewelry or she sleeps with other women or she was born a male.”

The events of the past two weeks show clearly that this message is an important one—because 10 years after the death of Matthew Shepard, people are still not getting it.

Instead, people are getting the message that it is just fine to denigrate GLBT people and call them names in the street. That it is OK to say that things we don’t like are “gay.” That it is no problem at all to hate GLBT people, because no one will stand up for us.

The Matthew Shepard Act—like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, like marriage, is the federal government standing up for us.

And we need them.

The Matthew Shepard Act will be reintroduced in the House on March 20 and in the Senate on April 12. Contact your senators and representatives today to let them know how important this bill is. Call the White House—over and over again, jam their phone lines, fill their email boxes—and tell President Bush not to veto the bill when it passes. And for good measure, sign the petition at MatthewShepard.org.

There must not be another Simmie Williams, not another Melbourne Brunner, not another Lawrence King. There must not be another Matthew Shepard.

If we speak loudly enough, and often enough, our representatives will hear us. It is up to us. Help pass the bill.

Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist. She edits and blogs daily on the gay political website VisibleVote08.com. Email her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com.