As part of a defense spending bill, Obama signed into law stronger protections from hate crimes for gay and transgendered people. Obama said the bill will "help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are."

At the signing ceremony was the mother of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man whose beating death in 1998 became a rallying point; the bill is named for him. It took more than a decade after the murder before Congress could pass legislation that President Clinton had originally pressed and that later gained little traction under President Bush, who had suggested he might veto it.

"I promised Judy Shepard, when she saw me in the Oval Office, that this day would come," Obama said.

Without President Bush to threaten a veto, the House voted 249-175 to pass the "Matthew Shepard Act," which recognizes violence based on sexual orientation as hate crimes. The legislation is associated with Shepard, a college student who was beaten to death in 1998 because he was gay, but it's officially termed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.

President Obama issued a statement ahead of the vote: "I urge members on both sides of the aisle to act on this important civil rights issue by passing this legislation to protect all of our citizens....  I also urge the Senate to work with my Administration to finalize this bill and to take swift action."

In a letter to leaders of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and a coalition of other civil rights organizations urged confirmation of Obama's nominee for attorney general, praising Eric Holder's experience enforcing hate crimes laws. "As U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Mr. Holder worked with a variety of organizations to renew emphasis on the enforcement of hate crimes so that criminal acts of intolerance would be severely punished," they wrote.