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Seven states passed anti-same-sex marriage initiatives during the November election. There now are only four states—Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and New Mexico—that do not have either a state constitutional amendment or a state law that restricts marriage to one man and one woman.

That statistic may seem to support the assertion that an overwhelming majority of Americans reject civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. However, that assertion is far from accurate.

The newly elected Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate next year are expected to approve hate-crimes legislation against LGBT victims. Further, Congress may even pass employment nondiscrimination legislation protecting LGBT employees.

The hate-crimes bill has a "very good chance of going to George Bush's desk ... in the first half of the year," Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who is openly gay, told the Los Angeles Times.

More than 100 organizations nationwide support the hate-crimes bill, including political groups such as the U.S. Conference of Mayors and law-enforcement groups such as the National Sheriffs' Association. It would provide local law enforcement with federal funding.

It was introduced after the well-publicized 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay young man who was brutally assaulted near Laramie, Wyo., and strapped to a barbed-wire fence overnight, which left him in a coma. He died days later.

Known as the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (LLEA), the hate-crimes bill would expand current law to include sexual orientation. It previously was approved by the Republican-controlled Congress—three times in the Senate and once in the House—but it has never been sent to the president. The inclusion of gender identity and expression into the current version has been advocated by some LGBT advocates, but such language could make its passage more difficult.

The employment nondiscrimination bill, known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), lost by one vote in the Senate in 1996. It has never been brought to a vote in the House. It is currently legal to discriminate against LGBT employees in 33 states.

"We see blocking those pieces of legislation as one of our top priorities," said Tom McClusky, a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a conservative group, to the Los Angeles Times. "We'll likely be relying on the president to veto."

Will President Bush use his veto power to block either bill? There is no clear answer to that question, but he did comment on ENDA during a presidential debate in 2000. "I support equal rights but not special rights for people," he said.

"It's all been a sort of meaningless political posturing," said Joe Solmonese, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT-advocacy group, to the New York Sun. "[The assertion of his veto is] always being said with the knowledge it's never going to land on his desk. The equation has changed entirely now."

Oriol R. Gutierrez Jr. is the executive director of the DiversityInc Foundation and president of the New York chapter of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. He was the managing editor of DiversityInc Media. E-mail him at OGutierrez@DiversityInc.org.

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