Hate crimes terrorize entire communities. When Matthew Shepard died in 1998, thousands of gay men and lesbians across the country were reminded that their sexuality made them vulnerable to horrific violence. Criminal offenses against people of color, gays, lesbians, people with disabilities, and other minority groups often target individuals, but they create insecurity and anxiety in local communities and vulnerable groups nationwide.

Gays and lesbians are increasingly in the public spotlight due to the marriage equality debate, and the number of hate crimes against them has spiked in some parts of the country. Individuals with non-traditional gender identities also continue to be targets of brutal violence nationwide. Yet federal prosecutors do not have legal authority to intervene in cases of violence based on bias toward transgender individuals at all, and law does not require the FBI to even collect statistics on such cases. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act would take a needed step to protect transgender Americans by allowing the FBI to gather statistics about the number of crimes motivated by bias against an individual’s gender identity and also to investigate and prosecute these crimes.

Is there a compelling public interest in preventing loving, committed, same-sex couples from getting legally married? The clear answer is no. Ask Canada. Ask Spain. Ask South Africa. Ask Massachusetts!

The real compelling public interest is in ending bigotry and discrimination. It's being true to our nation's values of freedom, fairness, justice and equality. We cannot and should not be able to regulate what individuals think and believe. But when it comes to what the government does, it must treat everyone equally. This includes same-sex couples and their families.

Years ago, the last time this gays-in-Scouting dust-up made it onto my radar, my brothers and I -- all three of us are Eagle Scouts -- fretted over the right expression of dissent. We considered sending back our Eagle badges, as others did, in protest. That we ultimately didn't says less about the extent of our outrage than our pride in achieving something fewer than 1% of Scouts manage. I worked hard for that -- suffered, even -- and, ashamedly in retrospect, I wasn't willing to give it up in the name of principle.

For me, the edification of Scouting came in the form of lifelong calls for strong community, an awareness of one's effect on the natural world, self-reliance and leadership skills. (Camping, however, remains just above waterboarding on my list of favorite activities.) To claim that these qualities are somehow reserved for heterosexuals, either as teachers or students, is to miss the point entirely.

The American people take that phrase “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” at face value. Most believe that the policy allows a person to serve as a gay American so long as he or she does not tell anyone. Unfortunately, as we know from our SLDN client base of approximately 75 cases at any one time, men and women can be discharged because someone else “tells,” such as a mother who can’t stand the thought of her son returning to Iraq, or a jealous partner, or an intercepted innocent e-mail from an admirer back home.

And because the criterion for discharge is “credible evidence from a reliable source,” with no standard for what “credible” or “reliable” means, the policy is arbitrarily enforced at the discretion of the commander.

Yes, he wants to amend the Constitution to reflect God's laws. American Taliban anyone? How long before adultery is punishable by stoning? And divorce? Forget about it. We should probably go ahead and cancel the NFL on Sundays too. Mike Huckabee's grand plan to save America is to save us all... one by one. The question is, are voters ready to be saved?