Maryland became the first state to extend hate-crimes protection to homeless people.
(Mr. Racicot's hanging offense? He wanted to extend hate-crime laws to cover sexual orientation after Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming).
His death galvanized a national movement to extend hate-crimes protection to gay men and lesbians, but it has also galvanized stiff opposition.
An effort to extend hate-crime legislation to include gay victims has produced a bitter backlash in some quarters: Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, sent a letter to clerics in his state arguing that it would be destructive to "faith, families and freedom".
And he has opposed legislation extending hate crime laws to cover gays.
Eleven years after Matthew Shepard's murder, President Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard Act that extended hate crime protections to LGBTQ people.
Asked whether he would work to protect LGBT people from hate crimes, Sessions, who voted against extending hate crime laws to cover gays and lesbians, said simply, "The law has been passed, Congress has spoken.
Corporate America has proven an unlikely force of change for transgender Americans, and lawmakers have started to realize the financial and political incentives to extending hate crime protections to them as a group.
Mr. Clinton also expressed reservations about the bill's lack of funding for the Justice Department to pursue lawsuits against the tobacco companies and the fact that it did not extend federal hate crimes legislation to crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation.
Panboys generously extend their hate beyond the fans themselves to include a broad array of filmmakers, actors, producers, screenwriters, basically everyone responsible for bringing the despised film to the silver screen, right down to the unpaid intern holding Ben Affleck's Gatorade bottle.
