This session, I have been working hard to introduce legislation that would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to Idaho’s hate crime law, but I have been stopped at every turn, even in the shadow of the murder of Steven Nelson, a Boise State employee and beloved member of the community, who was targeted by hate and violence because of his perceived sexual orientation.

On January 23, 2017, in a state court Kelly Schneider pleaded guilty to first-degree murder of Steven Nelson. Schneider lured Nelson to Lake Lowell where he brutally beat him, kicking him with steel tip boots. Naked and barefoot, Nelson dragged himself to a nearby house where he asked someone to call 911. He died later in a Boise hospital due to those injuries.

Last spring, Wendy Olson, the US Attorney received a petition from the organization Better Idaho with over 1,500 signatures calling for her to charge the defendants with a federal hate crime in Nelson’s murder. As Jordan Brady of Better Idaho said, Steven’s death wasn’t a robbery gone wrong, and it wasn’t an accident. It was a group of people who chose to rob, humiliate, and brutally murder someone who was hand-picked because of their sexual orientation.”  He and others also called out to amend Idaho’s hate crime statute that currently only provides protections based on “race, color, religion, ancestry, or national origin.”

Every Idahoan should have the right to live a life free from violence or threats of violence based on who they are.  Every citizen is  “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” All citizens deserve to be treated with fairness and perpetrators of this kind of violence must be held accountable.

According to the FBI, people who are LGBTQ are more likely to be targets of hate crimes; President Obama recognized these crimes as acts of “hate and terror” when he signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Federal Hate Crime bill into law in 2009. Less than a year ago, 49 people were massacred at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. This horrific incident sent a fearful chill across the country, increasing fear and anxiety about the safety of our LGBTQ friends, neighbors and family. 

Whenever a bias-motivated crime is committed, the victim’s entire community is left feeling victimized, vulnerable, fearful, isolated, and unprotected by the law. When one member of a group is targeted, the rest of the people in that group are left feeling vulnerable to the violence as well.  Hate crime laws send a message to the community that there is never room in civil society to target people based on who they are; these crimes are particularly heinous and threaten the very foundation of civil democracy.

I was deeply disappointed earlier this session to see Republicans quickly pass legislation to protect motorcyclists from profiling, but they couldn’t seen their way to grant protections to Idaho citizens being profiled and murdered for their sexual orientation or gender identity. The irony was painful, but the Democratic Caucus will not stop in our pursuit of justice for all of Idaho’s citizens, whether through hate crime laws or human rights legislation.