About one in 10 violent victimizations against LGBTQ+ people are hate crimes, according to a study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, which found that they are also nine times more likely to be victims of violent hate crimes.
The analysis found that victims of violent LGBT hate crimes are more likely to be younger, to be in a relationship with their attacker, and to have a white attacker.
Researchers defined violent hate crimes as bodily harm (assaults) that were motivated by bias and involved hate language, hate symbols, or some confirmation by police as evidence that the incident was a hate crime.
Results showed that between 2017 and 2019, LGBTQ+ people experienced 6.6 violent hate crime victimizations per thousand people, compared to 0.8 victimizations per thousand people for non-LGBT people. LGBT victims of violent hate crimes were more likely than LGBT victims of violent hate crimes to report problems in their social life, negative emotional responses, and physical symptoms of distress.
However, a 2022 FBI annual report showed that hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community rose dramatically from the previous year, recording a 13.8 percent increase in reports based on sexual orientation and a staggering 32.9 percent increase in reports of hate crimes based on gender identity.
The FBI report noted that there were 1,947 incidents involving an alleged victim's sexual orientation in 2022, up from 1,711 the year before, and 469 involving an alleged victim's gender identity, up from 353 the year before. The gender identity category included 338 cases that were specifically anti-transgender and 131 that targeted someone who was gender non-conforming.
Hate crimes motivated by race/ethnicity remained the largest category at 56 percent of all hate crimes. Hate crimes based on religion moved into second place, just ahead of sexual orientation.
Thus, more than 1 in 5 of any type of hate crime is motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice.
The UCLA study notes that LGBT victims of violent hate crimes are more likely than non-LGBT victims to be under the age of 35 (73 percent vs. 38 percent, respectively), to be in a relationship with their attacker (49 percent vs. 11 percent, respectively), and to have an attacker who is white (88 percent vs. 54 percent, respectively).
LGBT victims of violent hate crimes are about five times more likely than LGBT victims of other types of violent crimes to feel angry, violated and unsafe, and four times more likely to feel anxious, sad or depressed, as a result of their victimization, the report said.
Similarly, it explains that LGBTQ+ victims of violent hate crimes are six times more likely to have high blood pressure, five times more likely to have headaches, and three times more likely to have trouble sleeping as a result of the persecution.
Fewer than four in ten LGBT violent hate crime victims sought professional help for emotional (39 percent) or physical (35 percent) problems related to the victimization.
This publication was supported in whole or part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the CaliFornia State Library.
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