America has always had a brutal history when it comes to hate crimes against the LGBTQ community. One only needs to view what happened at Stonewall Inn in 1969, which launched the gay rights movement to the mainstream, to the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. Although there has been legislation passed on the national front, such as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was signed by then-President Obama in 2009, the need for stronger statewide protections has increased.

Delegate Danica Roem, D-Manassas, introduced House Bill 2132 in the Virginia General Assembly. According to Legiscan.com, its summary reads as follows, “Homicides and assaults and bodily woundings; certain matters not to constitute defenses. Provides that the discovery of, perception of, or belief about another person’s actual or perceived sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation, whether or not accurate, is not a defense to any charge of capital murder, murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, voluntary manslaughter, or assault and bodily wounding-related crimes and is not provocation negating malice as an element of murder.”

Another anti-hate crime bill, introduced by Senator Ghazala Hashimi, D-Richmond, is known as Senate Bill 1203. It would redefine the categories of victims whose intentional selection for a hate crime involving assault to include those of sexual orientation. The bill adds these categories of victims whose intentional selection for a hate crime involves malicious wounding and makes such crime punishable by a term of imprisonment of not less than five years, nor more than 40 years.

If passed, this would be a continuation of progressive values within the Commonwealth, as in 2020 the Virginia Values Act was made into law, prohibiting job and housing discrimination, among others, on the basis of gender and sexual orientation.