Anti-LGBT Killings at the Highest Rate in Ten Years

by Michael Jones · 2009-06-16 13:02:00 UTC
Topics:

Stop the Violence

This certainly (and sadly) isn't surprising to me, given the rise in hate crimes nationally over the past several years.  The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released a report today that said that anti-LGBT murders are at their highest rate since 1999, and that last year, we saw a 28% increase alone in fatal assaults against LGBT people.  Shameful.

Angie Zapata's murder in Greeley, Colorado.  Latiesha Green's murder in Syracuse, NY.  Lawrence King's murder in Oxnard, California.  Duanna Johnson's murder in Memphis, Tennessee.  The list goes on and on.  And it's certainly approaching an epidemic.

Sharon Stapel, Executive Director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, spoke to the Associated Press about the significance of these statistics:

"What we're also seeing, more disturbingly, is the increase in the severity of violence," said Sharon Stapel, executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, which coordinates coalition.

Stapel theorized that at least some of last year's violence was backlash against issues that arose during the during the presidential campaign. She cited debates about same-sex marriage, the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and federal legislation that would ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as possible flash points.

"The more visibility there is the more likely we're going to see backlash, and that's exactly what we see here," Stapel said.

That kind of echoes the sentiment that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano offered a few weeks back in her report discussing domestic terrorism.  Napolitano was lambasted by the conservative press and blogosphere, but her predictions in that report (that hate groups are on the rise) have so far proven nothing but true.

Given this, it's all the more important for Congress to deal with the issue of hate crimes legislation.  Harry Reid's press conference on the subject yesterday was helpful.  Even more helpful will be a vote in the Senate.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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