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SALT LAKE CITY — Two gay men who were beat up because of their sexual orientation watched alongside Sen. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, as the Utah Senate voted down his proposed new hate crimes law Wednesday.
"It hurt. It hurt seeing senators vote against something that could protect a lot of Utahns," Maxwell Christen said afterward.
Two men making gay slurs and sexual references attacked Christen and Rusty Andrade in Salt Lake City in December 2014, leaving them bloodied, bruised and emotionally shaken. Andrade, a lawyer, said the bill wouldn't change the outcome in their case, but the "bottom line is that we're thinking about all the other people injured every year that are victims of crime that won't be protected."
The Senate voted 17-11 against SB107, reversing last Friday's preliminary vote in which several senators signaled their yes votes were tentative.
"I lost this battle but we're gong to win this war on hate crimes," Urquhart told reporters. Urquhart blamed a statement from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for dooming the bill.
The LDS Church voiced concern earlier this month about legislation, including the hate crimes bill, that could upset the compromise lawmakers reached in 2015 to protect both religious liberty and LGBT rights.
No senators referenced the church's statement during the floor debate. Those against the proposed law argued it punishes thought and doesn't protect people equally because it creates different classes.
SB107 would include sexual orientation, sexual identity and other categories of people in Utah's hate crimes law. It would more clearly define a hate crime as an offense against a person or person's property based on a belief or perception about their ancestry, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, national origin, race, religion or sexual orientation.
It would allow prosecutors to bump up the level of a crime one step for both misdemeanors and felonies, raising a class A misdemeanor to a third-degree felony, for example.
Urquhart also proposed a companion resolution, SJR13, that said prosecutors could not use a defendant's expressions or associations as evidence unless it specifically relates to the alleged hate crime.
But Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Wood Cross, said if someone who thinks another person is transgender, even if he's not, faces a stiffer penalty under the law.
"How is this not punishing people for their thoughts? This is 'Minority Report' at its worst," he said referring to the futuristic Tom Cruise movie in which police use a psychic technology to arrest and convict murderers before they commit their crimes.
Urquhart countered that every crime punishes a thought and an act.
Sen. Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City, said the bill tries to "slice and dice our population" into groups. People could argue that their category is left out, he said.
"Where do you stop when we start listing your different groups?" Jenkins said. "I don't see white, caucasian male. … It gets to a point where it's ridiculous."
Paul Boyden of the Statewide Association of Prosecutors argued earlier in the session that the proposed legislation offered protections for everyone because everyone has a race and a gender.
The bill set a high standard for a perpetrator to be charged with a hate crime, which Sen. Jim Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, said goes beyond the victim and intimidates and terrorizes an entire group of people.
"It is not thought control for these two young men who had the crap beat out of them," said Dabakis, the state's only openly gay legislator. "They weren't jumped for money. They were jumped because they were gay."
Prosecutors don't use Utah's current hate crimes law because they say it's unenforceable and has no teeth.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said of the 1,279 reported hate crimes in Utah the past 20 years — the majority of which are related to race — none were prosecuted under the current law.
Urquhart complained earlier that the LDS Church never spoke to him about the bill before issuing its statement. But said he had a "wonderful" meeting with church officials Wednesday morning. He said he expressed his frustration and concern that one group shouldn't get to arbitrate LGBT issues and that the hate crimes bill isn't just an LGBT issue.
Urquhart argued that the proposed law balanced protections based on sexual orientation and religion.
Equality Utah, the Utah NAACP, the Statewide Association of Prosecutors and the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City supported the bill. The Utah Eagle Forum and the Sutherland Institute opposed it. The LDS Church declined further comment Wednesday.
