Smith isn't posturing.

Byline: The Register-Guard

As a Blue State Republican, Sen. Gordon Smith often is accused of taking political positions of convenience - stances cynically and specifically gauged to please moderate voters and enhance his chances in what promises to be a tough re-election bid in 2008.

That may sometimes be the case, although it's worth pointing out that Smith's positions, such as his opposition to the war in Iraq and support for raising cigarette taxes for children's health insurance in Oregon, have alienated many in his party's right wing. There have even been reports that Smith could face a conservative opponent in next year's GOP primary.

Whenever Smith is accused of reinventing himself politically, Exhibit A is often Smith's support for federal legislation protecting gays from hate crimes. Smith's political foes should find another example; the senator's support for expansion of the federal hate crime law has been heartfelt, consistent and unswerving since shortly after the brutal 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student.

Last Friday, Smith and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced hate crime legislation for the fifth consecutive session. Like its predecessors, the measure would add protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity to existing laws that target violence because of race and religion.

Previous incarnations of this legi- slation have passed in both the House and Senate in recent years, but never have reached the president's desk. With a new Democratic majority in Congress, this year should be different.

Thanks in part to Smith's lobbying, Republican support for the bill has grown over the years, although some conservatives still protest that expanding hate crimes protections improperly punishes thought rather than action.

It's time to retire this intellectually tread-worn argument. Hate crime laws don't criminalize socially unacceptable beliefs - they merely increase the penalties for only those actual crimes that flow out of those beliefs. As any fan of "Law and Order" or John Grisham novels can attest, motive has long been accepted an important factor in meting punishment.

It's also fitting that Smith and Kennedy have, for the first time, named the bill after Shepard, the gay college student who was beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead on a snow-covered soccer field in Wyoming. It was that appalling murder that prompted Smith to become one of the first congressional Republicans to champion expanding federal hate-crimes laws.

Elected officials across the country promised to take action after the Shephard murder. Nearly a decade later, it's time for Congress to approve the hate crimes bill that Smith long has championed. Not as a matter of political convenience, but of conviction.