Hate Crimes Against LGBT People Are Sadly Common [View all]

[Behind the Aegis]

The massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday was the worst mass shooting in American history and the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11. Through another lens, however, it was not an outlier. The gunman’s choice of target, a gay club, makes him just one of many to commit hate crimes against gay Americans. Although the magnitude and violence of the attack was unusual, the targeting of LGBT Americans is sadly common.

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Of 5,462 “single-bias incidents” (hate-crime incidents with one motivation) in the FBI’s 2014 hate crime statistics database, 1,115, about a fifth, were motivated by bias against a sexual orientation or gender identity.1 (This count is almost certainly much lower than the actual number of hate crimes. Data on hate crimes is notoriously difficult to collect, as it relies heavily on self-reporting and many hate crimes are never categorized as such.) Of those incidents, 54 percent targeted gay men specifically. Only two groups were the targets of more hate crimes than gay men: black and Jewish people. (Obviously, all these groups aren’t mutually exclusive.)

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However, the shooter’s choice of location may have been all the more insidious for that. A gay-friendly bar or club is supposed to be a safe place. Even before Sunday’s shooting, nightclubs were slightly more dangerous for LGBT people than for other groups; only 1.6 percent of all hate crimes in 2014 occurred in bars and nightclubs, compared with the 2.1 percent of those that targeted people for their sexual orientation and gender identity.

The motivations of the killer may become clearer as investigators learn more. Nevertheless, in his choice to target gay people, he wasn’t alone.

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This won't come as surprise to GLBT people or our real allies, but it will undoubtedly be a shocker to some, even more so to those who think anti-Semitism is a "joke", "not a real problem", or "thing of the past". Keep in mind too, not all states report hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity, so how true are these numbers?