What’s Love Got To Do With It?

By Joshua Boschee
Staff Writer

Now that the Super Bowl is out of the way, we can all move on and celebrate another American tradition, Valentine’s Day. The one day out of the year dedicated to lovers, chocolate, Hallmark cards and overpriced dining. As you can tell, this is one of my favorite holidays of the year. Although some may say I am simply bitter because I don’t have a date for the magical evening, others will agree with my distaste for a corporate hijacked holiday that if nothing else might help stimulate our economy.

Whichever camp you fall in, I’m sure that we can agree that there continues to be a battle waged against love with both sides winning and losing. We saw two weeks ago that the state of Illinois now recognizes civil unions with Hawaii revisiting the issue this week. New York and Maryland are getting closer to having legislatures pass same-sex marriage legislation. However, closer to home we find ourselves on the losing side of the battle against love.

On Feb. 2nd, the ND Senate voted down Senate Bills 2051 and 2052. The Tribal and State Relations Committee proposed these two pieces of legislation that would have increased the penalty for actions against an individual (SB 2051) or property (SB 2052) that are motivated by bias towards a particular group. Both bills enumerated “actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age or national origin.” Passing these bills would have created state laws that fall closely in line with Federal law (Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act), thereby providing additional support to local law enforcement agencies if they suspected a crime was motivated by bias towards one of the enumerated groups. Passing these bills would have been an important step in the state of ND recognizing that some people are at higher risk of being targeted with violence because of who they are.

The fine lobbyists of the ND Family Alliance, ND Chapter of the Concerned Women of America and the ND Catholic Conference immediately jumped on the legislation because it recognized that people who are perceived to be or actually are gay, lesbian or bisexual are at a much higher rate of being targeted than straight people are. All because of who we are and who we love. This led to the Senate Judiciary Committee hemming and hawing about whether this legislation was worthwhile in ND. After all, this type of legislation is a slippery slope to beginning to prosecute so called “thought crimes.”  Never mind the fact that states that have passed this type of legislation actually have seen a decrease in the number of bias-motivated crimes. Senator Carolyn Nelson from Fargo was the only Senator to support the bills in Committee.

Fast forward three days to Feb. 5th. We find Jason Lawrence, a UND student and his boyfriend Darren Wilcox, leaving a bar in Grand Forks when they were approached by three other men who start yelling gay slurs at them and then inquired as to whether they were gay. The answer was “Yes.” This resulted in Jason and Darren being physically attacked. They were hit in the neck, mouth and on the side of the head. They immediately called 911, as did some bystanders, which caused the attackers to flee in their car.

According to the Grand Forks Herald, Darren stated, “I think people need to be aware that this is something that isn’t acceptable. You can’t just go around hitting someone whether you believe their way of life is right or not.” Jason followed with, “What’s to keep them from coming to the next show or the one after that?”

That is a fine question to ask the ND Senate.

Yes, if the attackers are found, they will be charged with some version of assault. However, the fact that their actions were driven by a bias against gay people will not be factored into the charge or any sanction from the court. Had the ND Senate passed SB 2051, it wouldn’t have impacted the charges in this case, but would have sent a message to the people of ND that bias-motivated crimes are egregious and carry extra penalties.

It is sad that in a state that claims to be values-based, that because two men love each other, they become targets and are the victims of a horrible crime. A crime that is part of the battle against love.

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