Law, The Archive »

On a previous post, commentor ‘Jeff Boswell’ made the good point that in the realm of issues invovling homosexuals, there is not enough attention on the disturbing number of hate crimes that occur against homosexuals in this country. His point (I believe) can be summarized thusly: The issue of gay marriage is not nearly as important as focusing on protecting these groups from hate crimes and expanding hate crime legislation. Though I disagreed with Mr. Boswell’s opinion on gay marriage (he felt it was ridiculous to be arguing over gay marriage when things like hate crimes are still a problem), he did have a good point. MSM has gotten caught up in the storm over the gay marriage issue, which was brought to the forefront of the nation’s eyes when California defined marriage as only between a man and a woman.

So I did some research on the issue of hate-crimes against homosexuals and found some disturbing information. The following information is the number of  U.S. hate crimes that occurred in 2005 – 2007, collected by the FBI under The Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990. What the data reveals is a disturbing increase in the frequency of such crimes, albeit a slight one, in the U.S.

2007: 1,460 hate crime offenses based on sexual-orientation bias were reported by law enforcement agencies. Of these offenses:

• 59.2 percent were classified as anti-male homosexual bias.
• 24.8 percent were reported as anti-homosexual bias.
• 12.6 percent were prompted by an anti-female homosexual bias.
• 1.8 percent were the result of an anti-heterosexual bias.
• 1.6 percent were classified as anti-bisexual bias.

2006: 1,415 hate crime offenses based on sexual-orientation bias were reported by law enforcement agencies. Of these offenses:

• 62.3 percent were classified as anti-male homosexual biased.
• 20.7 percent were classified as anti-homosexual biased.
• 13.6 percent were classified as anti-female homosexual biased.
• 2.0 percent were classified as anti-heterosexual biased.
• 1.5 percent were classified as anti-bisexual biased.

2005: 1,171 hate crime offenses based on sexual-orientation bias were reported by law enforcement agencies. Of these offenses:

• 60.9 percent were anti-male homosexual.
• 19.5 percent were anti-homosexual.
• 15.4 percent were anti-female homosexual.
• 2.0 percent were anti-heterosexual.
• 2.3 percent were anti-bisexual.

While the trend does not increase dramatically between 2006 and 2007, the FBI does not have data on the past two years. In those two years, much has happened in the world of gay and lesbian rights. The issue of marriage has become a polarizing issue in this country, and one can only speculate that the number of hate crimes hasn’t decreased in the past few years. So far, 45 states have some form of anti-hate crime legislation. The remaining five states that do not have hate crime laws are Georgia, Indiana, Arkansas, South Carolina and Wyoming. ¹

The shocking thing about these statistics is that hate crimes based upon sexual-orientation only amount to about 16% of total hate crimes committed in 2007.  The great majority of hate crimes still revolve around race, with about 70% out of nearly 5,000 hate crimes aimed at african-americans.² However way you want to read these numbers, the fact remains that our nation is pretty pathetic to still be comitting hate crimes at all. Although we’ve come a long way since the Civil Rights Movement, it isn’t quite far enough. Even if we could honestly say that racism against african americans was over, we have proven to simply find another group to discriminate against. We call ourselves a nation of immigrants and a melting pot of cultures, but in reality we divide ourselves in petty and hateful ways, culminating in detestable and heinous acts of violence. With such a high rate of occurrence, Boswell’s question as to why hate crime legislation doesn’t garner more media attention is a well founded one.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime_laws_in_the_United_States#State_laws [↩]
2. For those on the right who believe the era of civil rights ought to be over (Limburger, Chief Justice Roberts), show them these numbers and then ask them if race still isn’t an issue in this country. Apologies for my digression to race, but that needed to be said. [↩]