Agence France-Presse, via The Raw Story, is reporting a “sharp increase in anti-gay hate crimes.”
Around 17 percent of hate crime victims were attacked because of their sexual orientation, the overwhelming majority, 96 percent, because they were gay or lesbian.
That’s nearly an 11% increase.
The FBI report indicates that hate crimes against those poor oppressed Christian conservatives barely registered and hate crimes against heterosexuals charted at 2.0% of all cases in the sexual orientation category. However:
Nearly 20 percent were attacked for their religious affiliation, with Jews making up around two-thirds of the victims of those attacks.
Muslims were the targets of less than eight percent of religious hate crimes, putting them in third place behind Jews and followers of unspecified “other religions” attacked in 13 percent of religion-fueled hate crimes.
The total number of hate crimes rose to nearly 9,700 from 9,500 in 2007, according to the FBI. The article states: “Most hate crimes targeting individuals were intimidation or simple assault, but seven murders and 11 rapes were counted among the hate crime statistics.”
A report last week in the Los Angeles Times on 20 November 2009 indicated that, while hate crimes dropped by 4% in 2008 in LA County, hate crimes directed at LGBT people “increased, prompted in part by last November’s highly charged Proposition 8 initiative, the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in California.”
There were 134 sexual-orientation hate crimes reported last year, up from 111 in 2007, and were more likely to be violent than hate crimes motivated by race or religion, according to the annual Hate Crime Report by the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations.
Bonus points to Dan Savage for noting: “Remember how anti-Mormon, anti-Christian hate crimes totally skyrocketed in California after Prop 8 because gays and lesbians are so angry and violent and hateful and intolerant?”
Ahem.
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