Margaret Cho has launched a  Twitter tirade against the Philadelphia police department over the light sentences handed down this week for two of the three gay-bashers charged last year in a brutal street attack against a gay couple.  Philly police responded that they don’t handle prosecutions. The exchange continued, with Cho complaining that there were no hate crimes charges and the police then informed her that no such law exists in Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately while Philly PD was right that they don;t handle prosecutions they were very wrong when they said that no Hate Crime laws exist in Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA is a member of this union & since hate crimes against LGBT people are illegal in the United States of America as of October 2009 therefore federal law hate crimes legislation applies.

Federal law banning hate crimes against LGBT people needs to be enforced in every state of this union in order to get federal funding and unless it it enforced it is useless.

And as for gay politico Brian Sims. there has been no word of his reaction to the very light pleas bargain deal.  But there has been a lot of posts on his Facebook page about fundraising his upcoming run for Congress.