Hate crimes against lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals occur at similar rates as other minority groups, such as blacks and Muslims, a recent report by the Williams Institute found.
The Williams Institute, housed within the UCLA School of Law, studies sexual orientation law and public policy.
The report found that while lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals are not currently protected under federal hate crime laws, they are the victims of such crimes nearly as often as other targeted groups.
Rebecca Stotzer, the author of the report and a public policy fellow at the Williams Institute, said about 13 in 100,000 lesbian, gay and bisexual people report being the victims of hate crimes. Transgender people were not included in the report because sufficient data was not available, Stotzer said.
That number is fairly consistent with hate crime rates for other frequently-targeted groups ““ blacks report a rate of eight in 100,000, Jews report 15 in 100,000, and Muslims report 12 in 100,000.
Stotzer said the prevalence of hate crimes against the gay community is often ignored because the LGBT population is smaller than many other minority groups.
“Most people look at the raw numbers. They try to play it off as though it’s not a problem,” she said. “(Lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals) actually experience similar rates of victimization.”
Stotzer said she believes the rates for the LGBT community are similar to those of other groups because hate crimes against different groups have the same root causes.
“If you’re a racist, you’re probably also homophobic, and you also have certain views about what religions are right,” she said. “It’s a rigidity of thinking.”
Currently, federal hate crime laws do not protect LGBT individuals, and Stotzer said many past efforts to include them in such laws have failed.
There is legislation before Congress now that would expand existing laws, but President Bush has said he will veto it if it passes both houses.
Just before the House of Representatives passed the bill in May, Bush issued a statement promising to veto the bill because state and local laws already protect against these kinds of hate crimes and there is no need to include them in federal laws.
“(There is) no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement,” the statement read, adding that the bill also does not include other groups such as the elderly.
But Stotzer said she believes it makes sense to include LGBT individuals in federal laws because of the rates at which hate crimes occur against them.
Edgar Alvarez, internal vice president for UCLA’s Queer Alliance, agreed, adding that he believes hate crimes are a significant problem for the LGBT community.
“(Including LGBT individuals) shouldn’t even be a question,” he said. “It’s common sense. I think it should be a federal issue … something has to be done.”
Though Alvarez said he does not believe hate is a big issue at UCLA, the national situation is different.
“The reality is not what it is like at UCLA. UCLA doesn’t correlate with what goes on with the rest of the country,” he said.