The David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (H.R. 254) or David's Law, was a bill first introduced in the United States House of Representatives on January 7, 2009, by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas. It was designed to reinforce enforcement of hate crimes, and specifically make sexual orientation a protected class alongside race and gender. It’s main purpose is to enhance Federal enforcement of hate crimes. The bill states that existing Federal law was inadequate to address violence motivated by race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability of the victim. It calls for the revision of Section 245 of title 18 of the United States Code as well as the addition of a subsection outlining the punishment for anyone found guilty of a hate crime.
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“If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“There are certain things—as, a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three—
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the Sea.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.”
—Sarah Ellis (1812–1872)