Reports of hate crimes against gays and religious groups increased sharply in 2008, according to new FBI data released Monday.
Overall, the number of reported hate crimes increased about 2 percent. These same figures show a nearly 11 percent increase in hate crimes based on sexual orientation, and a nearly 9 percent increase in hate crimes based on religion.
The largest category, racially-motivated hate crimes, fell less than 1 percent.
Among all categories of hate crimes, roughly a third are vandalism or property damage. About 30 percent involve intimidation of some kind, and another 30 percent were physical attacks against people.
The FBI does not compare year-to-year trends in hate crimes, saying the number of agencies reporting changes too much. And in fact, the bureau cautioned that the increase reported Monday might well be due to more agencies tracking such incidents.
In 2008, 2,145 different agencies reported hate crimes incidents, while the year before 2,025 agencies did this reporting.
In total, there were 7,783 hate crimes reported to the FBI last year, and seven murders were categorized as hate crimes.
Half of all hate crimes are motivated by race, according to the FBI. One out of every five is driven by religious bias, and one out of every six is based on sexual orientation bias.
The new statistics come less than a month after President Barack Obama signed a bill expanding those covered by the federal law against hate crimes. Previously, the law had protected those attacked on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin.
The new law signed by Obama now covers crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It also removes the restriction that federal authorities can launch investigations of victims who were engaged in federally protected activities like voting or free speech.
Today is the eleventh annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is set aside to memorialize people who have been killed because of anti-transgender hatred and prejudice. According to TDOR's website, "Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgender -- that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant -- each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgender people." That includes, for instance, a human rights worker, Cynthia Nicole, believed to have been killed for her work on behalf of transgender people, and Michael Hunt, murdered with his trans lover, Taysia Elzy. But the majority of victims are trans people who are members of other oppressed groups as well. Blogger Queen Emily at Questioning Transphobia, who has "misgivings about TDOR, about how productive it is, about appropriation," writes:
Who is being mourned is the most important question of all. 160 estimated deaths of trans people, and the vast majority in Central and South America (75% according to Transgender Europe). So it seems to me that to unite all trans people under one banner ignores the specifics of death -- sex (the majority are trans women), race (Latina and black), class and occupation (sex work) are as important factors as transness.
A look at the list of those who have died since the 2008 day of remembrance -- which can be found at the TDOR website or in the video below -- makes that clear, along with a couple of other things. Like the number of victims of anti-transgender hatred whose names are unknown, and how extraordinarily brutal their deaths often are. According to the Human Rights Campaign, such crimes "tend to be particularly violent." Just last week in Puerto Rico, 19-year-old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was decapitated, dismembered and burned by a man who thought the gay teen was a woman when he picked him up for sex, and became enraged upon learning that he was wrong. Jos at Feministing points out that we don't know how the victim self-identified, but "Lopez Mercado's murder reflects those of too many others killed when presenting a gender other than that assigned to them at birth. Some may not have identified as trans but all were killed because of hatred directed towards those who break the strict rules of the compulsory gender binary. They were killed because they did not conform to what someone else thought their gender should be."
In an interview on the GLAAD blog, trans man and activist Ethan St. Pierre, whose transgender aunt Deborah Forte was murdered in 1995, says, "Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day when we come together to remember those that we've lost, but it also reminds us of how unsafe we are and how we are targets of violence -- and that nobody is really safe from it. If you're a trans person, especially if you're an unemployed trans person out on the street, there's a really good chance you're going to lose your life. It reminds me how unsafe we are. And it reminds me how much work we have to do to educate people so that it doesn't keep happening."
LGBT activists -- and progressives generally, regardless of sexuality -- have been waiting for months now to hear about a timetable for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which forbids gays from openly serving. And with good reason; ending the ban was, after all, a campaign promise of President Obama's.
If Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is to be believed -- and given his own sexuality and his stature among Congressional Democrats, on issues like this one, he generally is -- we now have an idea of that timeline.
On Wednesday, Frank told the Advocate's Kerry Eleveld that a repeal is likely to be a part of the Department of Defense authorization bill taken up in Congress next year. "'Don’t ask, don’t tell' was always going to be part of the military authorization," Frank said.
Frank also told Eleveld that he's been communicating about this with the White House and Congressional leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, so presumably he knows what he's talking about here. The problem is the chance of someone, whether in the White House or in Congress, getting cold feet about the idea of doing the repeal in what could be a tough election year anyway. Overturning DADT polls quite well, but that doesn't mean people won't be scared anyway.
(Hat-tip to Ben Smith.)
President Obama correctly stated that people should not "rush to judgment" regarding the motivation of Nidal Hasan -- the individual who killed 13 people at the Fort Hood military base. Unfortunately, the public often races to assign a collective narrative to extremely violent events. Typically, the earliest narratives rest on gross stereotypes and, consequently, miss the mark. For example, many commentators assumed that Arab terrorists bombed the Oklahoma federal building, until they learned that Timothy McVeigh -- a disgruntled, white former member of the military -- committed the heinous crime.
Recent acts of mass violence have pitted liberals and conservatives against one another. Both sides have argued that the killers' ideologically laced statements prove the bankruptcy of the others' political views. Neither side, however, seems to understand or appreciate the deep psychosis that causes acts of mass violence.
While mass murderers often embrace extreme political or religious views, mental illness makes them susceptible to extremism in the first place. According to Dr. Steven Dinwiddie, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago, commentators who blame religious zealotry for Hasan's killing spree miss the mark. Dinwiddie says:
I think it would be a mistake for people to theorize [he did this] because he is an adherent of this or that religious faith ... The mental illness comes first, then flowing from that is the adoption of perhaps, unusual, religious beliefs.
When commentators adhere to political agendas and discard intellectual integrity, facts rarely matter.
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and Hasan
Recent reports indicate that military officials knew that Hasan's upcoming deployment to Afghanistan caused him severe emotional distress. Also, according to unnamed sources quoted by ABC News, the military knew months ago that Hasan tried to establish contact with al-Qaida. Nevertheless, Hasan remained in the military and did not face discharge proceedings or questions about his fitness to serve.
Apparently, the military retained a person who suffered from known (or reasonably discoverable) psychological problems and who attempted to contact an anti-U.S. terrorist group. Meanwhile, the military continues to enforce "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and to discharge mentally fit and loyal gay and lesbian service members. No theory of military preparedness can justify this perverse outcome.
LGBT activists -- not to mention plenty of other people in the community -- have never been particularly impressed with President Obama's efforts on their behalf. Despite his campaign promises, he has not yet moved toward ending "don't ask, don't tell," or put his weight behind repealing the Defense of Marriage Act or passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. And that's only the beginning: He'd already put activists on the alert when he had an anti-gay singer join him on the campaign trail.
The tensions between the LGBT community and the administration have been constantly bubbling under the surface, and at times there have been open battles. Though the White House made some moves to at least quiet the most public of those fights, they've still been unable to bring the gay activists who'd normally be a solid base of support back into the fold.
Now, the fighting's back out in the open, as two prominent gay bloggers -- John Aravosis, who's previously written for Salon, and Joe Sudbay of Americablog -- have announced that they're organizing what they're calling a temporary donor boycott of the Democratic National Committee. Joined by another high-profile figure in the movement, Michelangelo Signorile, they're asking people not to donate "until the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is passed, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) is repealed, and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is repealed."
It will be interesting to see how the White House responds, if at all. And it will also be interesting -- and instructive -- to see how members of the LGBT community, and voters of all kinds, respond. The gay organizations haven't been at the forefront of the opposition to Obama; instead, it's been people like Aravosis and Signorile leading the charge. Success now might help them further supplant the traditional power structure in the community.
Update: Aravosis e-mailed me to say that DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsashas added his site as a co-sponsor of the boycott. If Moulitsas gets really active in backing the effort on DailyKos -- he hasn't yet responded to a voicemail left seeking comment -- that alone should make the DNC sit up and take notice.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Paul Hogarth remembers how angry he was when Proposition 8 passed in California. “I witnessed the train wreck,” he says. “I was angry with how we blew it.” When same sex marriage came under attack in Maine, Hogarth, a blogger for the Web site Beyond Chron, decided he had to do something to help.
Hogarth’s friend Jay Cash had started a program called Travel for Change during the Obama campaign where people could donate airline miles so volunteers could go to swing states. Hogarth also started Volunteer Vacation so out-of-towners could get free housing if they went to volunteer for a week in Maine. For people on the Northeast’s I-95 corridor who might want to come up for a weekend of walking the precincts, Hogarth put together Drive for Equality, a carpool program.
“We were applying the lessons of the Obama campaign,” says Hogarth as the polls closed in Biddeford, Maine. “The No on 8 campaign was a top-down Hillary Clinton-style campaign. This was more of a bottom-up Obama-style campaign.”
In California, activists are split over whether to take on same-sex marriage again in 2010 or 2012. Maine, for many, was the dress rehearsal. “Maine might be different from California but the National Organization for Marriage in Maine (which opposed same-sex marriage) waged a cookie cutter campaign,” says Rick Jacobs, chairman of the Courage Campaign, which is considering a push to repeal Proposition 8 in 2010. “They even used the same TV ad.”
Now marriage equality supporters are having to come to terms with another loss. Same-sex marriage in Maine was repealed 53 percent to 47 percent according to latest numbers.
In California, the fight against Proposition 8 had been led by Equality California. The organization, which had been heavily criticized by many in the LGBT rights community for how it handled the No on 8 campaign, had tried to be on the offensive in Maine. They had sent 11 field staff to Maine. They had run phone banks from California that had made over 60,000 calls. “People took a day off work to make those calls,” says Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. “A lot of people said they had wished they had done more against Prop. 8.”
“When something bad happens, and people’s rights are taken away, that’s when a movement is galvanized,” says Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign. Courage Campaign set up its own phone banks in the Bay Area in people’s houses. They had four full-time staff in Maine and 11 volunteers. “We did not budget for this,” says Jacobs. “The 11 volunteers raised their own money. We raised over $60,000 from members that went directly to the campaign.”
It was looking good. For the first time, the marriage equality folks were ahead in fundraising early in the campaign. Protect Maine Equality raised $4 million, compared with $2.5 million for Stand for Marriage Maine. Equality Maine had learned from the hits the No on 8 campaign had taken in California. When the first ads about schoolchildren learning about gay marriage showed up in Maine, they were ready with a counter ad featuring Maine’s teacher of the year.
Now with Maine voters having struck down same-sex marriage, activists in California are wondering what lessons to take back home. John Bare, a San Francisco resident who is part of a donor circle that gives money to marriage equality campaigns nationwide, cautions against reading too much into the today-Maine, tomorrow-California theories.
“Maine is in no way scalable up to California,” says Bare. “Maine is French Catholic, white, middle- and upper-class.” It also has the population of the size of San Diego. When marriage equality campaigners wanted to target their message to a precise demographic they found a French Catholic grandmother and her gay son and his longtime partner. “In California we need messages for Latino immigrants and Cantonese immigrants,” says Bare. “We need more tailoring than we could afford.”
Paul Hogarth agrees. “In California there was a serious problem with outreach to communities of color. Whatever happens in Maine, we will still have that problem in California. And a lot of liberal, progressive groups are not good at reaching these communities,” he says.
But he is optimistic that some good will come out of Maine. “The campaign learned how to listen to the grass roots. It reached out to people outside the gay havens. They did not let the opposition own the religion issue. Or the children issue.”
He says, unlike in California in 2008, he at least feels he did everything he could to save same-sex marriage in Maine.
Bare worries that the loss in Maine, coupled with the recent resignation of the chairs of the National Equality March, will be a double blow for the movement. “I think the energy might go out of many who want to go to the ballot in 2010,” says Bare.
The Courage Campaign is still studying the results of a massive survey of the state’s voters to see if it makes sense to launch a push for marriage equality in 2010, says Jacobs.
But Kors of Equality California says despite putting the best face on it, “losing is always devastating. Never before has a majority voted on a minority’s right. It’s time for that to end.”
A version of this story was originally published by New America Media.
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