A month ago this week, we marked the tenth anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard, the openly gay University of Wyoming student who was beaten to death by two men because of his sexual orientation.  Since that time, gay rights organizations have been working tirelessly to enact the Matthew Shepard Act, a federal piece of legislation that would add sexual orientation to the list of protected groups under hate crimes laws.  The Matthew Shepard Foundation was even started in Matt's honor, to promote awareness of crimes committed against LGBT persons.

In 2007, activists got close to seeing the Matthew Shepard Act become law. A verstion of the bill passed both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, but President Bush came out strongly saying he would veto the legislation.  The bill languished.

But in an interview with OutTakeOnline.com, Rep. Tammy Baldwin goes on record as saying that in her guess, the Matthew Shepard Act will be the first LGBT piece of legislation that a President Obama, and his new Congress, tackles.  Rep. Baldwin also offers a guess on how she thinks a President Obama will interface with the LGBT community.

We can begin to judge this president-elect by the kind of campaign he has run and it has been an extraordinarily inclusive and diverse campaign. And I expect that that will be characteristic of the administration that he puts together.

You can listen to the interview with Rep. Baldwin. Counting Baldwin, there are now three openly gay members of Congress, with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep-Elect Jared Polis (D-Colo.) joining her.  Hopefully, these will be three powerful voices for LGBT rights in the 111th Congress.