COLORADO SPRINGS - Friday is the 11th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance around the world. Two services will be held in Colorado as part of the remembrance.
The first will be an evening service at the All Souls Unitarian Church on Tejon in the Springs. The service begins at 6pm. The second will be held in Denver at the Washington United Church of Christ on S. Williams St. It begins at 7pm and will end at 10pm.
The day of remembrance is held in honor of those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.
President Barack Obama signed hate crime legislation that extends protection to people based on sexual orientation on October 28th, sealing a long-fought victory to gay advocates. The president spoke of a nation becoming a place where "we're all free to live and love as we see fit."
The new law expands federal hate crimes to include those committed against people because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It also loosens limits on when federal law enforcement can intervene and prosecute crimes, amounting to the biggest expansion of the civil-rights era law in decades.
"No one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love," Obama said in East Room reception, surrounded by supporters.
"No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are, or because they live with a disability."
The bill is named for Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, the victims of two types of hate crimes. Shepard, a gay college student, was murdered and found tied to a fence in Wyoming in 1998. The same year, Byrd, a black man, was chained to a pickup by three white men and dragged to his death in Texas.
"We must stand against crimes that are meant not only to break bones, but to break spirits; not only to inflict harm, but to instill fear," Obama said.
Groups pushing for the expanded civil rights protections rejoiced. "This is a landmark step in eliminating the kind of hate motivated violence that has taken the lives of so many in our community," said Jarrett Barrios, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Hate crimes law enacted after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 centered on crimes based on race, color, religion or national origin.
Some 45 states have hate crimes statutes, and the bill would not change current practices where hate crimes are generally investigated and prosecuted by state and local officials. But it does broaden the narrow range of actions — such as attending school or voting — that can trigger federal involvement and allows the federal government to step in if the Justice Department certifies that a state is unwilling or unable to follow through on an alleged hate crime.
Colorado was already one of the few states with a hate-crime law which covered transgender people, but the murder of a Colorado teen in 2008 helped spark calls for the national hate-crimes law.
In April, a jury in Greeley found a Thornton man guilty of first-degree murder in the beating death of a transgender woman. 32-year-old Allen Andrade is now serving life in prison without parole for the beating death of 18-year-old Angie Zapata in 2008.
