We’re always skeptical of official numbers on hate crime incidents, since these figures rely on the crimes being reported, something that might not happen because a victim is shamed into silence or an arresting officer fails to mark the proper box. That said, the FBI’s latest report says anti-gay hate crimes — whether vandalism or attacks on a person — were up 11 percent last year, compared to religious-based hate crimes increasing 9 percent, and race-based crimes down about 1 percent. We can point to the just-signed Matthew Shepard Act and say “Thank god Obama signed that,” but what the law will probably do is help increase the number of hate crimes reports. That doesn’t mean the actual number of attacks have gone up, but because of increased attention on anti-gay hate crimes, and elevated resources, we expect to be here next year reporting another increase.
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Anti-Gay Hate Crimes Up 11 Percent in 2008. Because There Were More? Or More Reports?
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Keith Kimmel
Well, an increase in reports would be a good thing. So that they cant sweep it under the rug anymore.
Bill Perdue
Hate crimes usually go up during an election year, especially if SSM is on the agenda.
Hate crimes increase in direct proportion to hate speech. Candidates like Obama and McCain cater to the bigotry of the religious right by attacking our right to be married, giving credence to cult inspired hate speech which in turn empowers thugs. In the mind of hater thugs “gawd’s in the mix” translates into “gawd told me to bugsmack a fag.” And they do.
The new hate crimes reporting law has to be enhanced by laws mandating draconian punishments for hate crimes against us, women, minorities, immigrants and trade unionists. And it needs to be changed so that we can demand the indictment of cult leaders who advocate or promote violence against us, women, minorities, immigrants and trade unionists.
B
http://www.ag.ca.gov/cjsc/publications/hatecrimes/hc08/preface08.pdf has the data for California. The increase in 2008 over 2007 was 16.7 percent (from 132 to 154). While it is tempting to blame the increase on the advertising related to Proposition Eight, given that it is higher than the nation-wide
reported increase of 11 percent, the numbers in California are too small for the increase to be statistically significant. The standard deviation is around 8 percent, but yearly fluctuations within a standard deviation from the mean occur roughly 2/3 of the time – the rest of the time the fluctuations are larger (further from the mean in either direction, up or down).
Lack of statistical significance in this case is a good thing – the alternative is a drastically larger number of crimes. What you can do, however, it to do comparisons with all states that have had anti-gay legislation proposed via initiatives or referendums, and see if most tended to result in an increase.
If so, that would be something to throw at the people proposing anti-gay initiatives, something that would really anger parents who have gay children or children whose peers think they might be gay.