Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals occupy approximately ten percent of the United States’ inhabitants, meaning if you are sitting in a lecture composed of a hundred people, more than ten of those students are LGBT individuals. However, this compellingly vast minority group is one of the least protected groups by the United States government although they are the most vulnerable to be targeted by discrimination and hate crimes. Every year thousands of people are harassed, attacked and slaughtered because they do not mold to America’s idea of what “normal” is. Despite the cogent shift in public opinion in regards to LGBT individuals over the past twenty or thirty years, the laws germane to hate crimes have remained static. Through the unification of more improved laws in place for protecting those impacted by hate crimes and a deeper, more integral approach that goes beyond repair at the legal level and amends things at the social level, we can make our society a safer and more accepting place for non-conforming individuals.
A hate crime is defined as an act of hostility or belligerent behavior against an individual’s perceived race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender. These crimes aren’t premeditated as an attack on just an individual, but as an attack on the community to which they belong as a whole. Those who are convicted of carrying out hate crimes and given tougher punishment or sentencing. These recurrent attacks on LGBT individuals stand reminders that bigotry that kills is much more than an unfortunate section in the archive of the United States. Acts of racial, gender, ethnic and religious violence persevere as mediums of oppression. These crimes are not as much relative to any single victim but it is much more about the cultural groups they are representative of. They are considered an assault on all members of stigmatized and marginalized communities. “Hate crimes are seen as an instrument of intimidation and control exercised against those who seem to have stepped outside the box that society has carefully constructed for them(Perry).” Although hate crime occurrences have skyrocketed and are being more heard about in present years, they are not a new anomaly, history repeats itself as comparable motifs of incitement, sentiment and victimization consistent with time. This is comparable to how as laws adapted to the changing times, crimes against African Americans were an epidemic following the Jim Crow laws and many blacks were brought to their deaths through lynching and other methods.
In the early 1990s, the president elect at the time, George Bush signed into the law the Federal Hate Crime Statistics Act, which warranted that the Attorney General’s office aggregate data on hate crimes motivated by the victim’s race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation (Perry 7). There is considerable variation in the victim populations addressed by individual state hate crime statues. For instance, the state of Oregon’s hate crime statues are broadened to not only those who are violated because of their religion, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, but also to those who are violated because of political affiliations, handicapped, citizenship status and membership in an organization.
“According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, a national network of thirty five local organizations providing services to and advocating on behalf of LGBT people found that in 2008, there were over 2,000 instances of homophobic and transphobic violence reported to just thirteen local organizations across the country— representing a 26 percent increase over 2006 figures (Mogul 119).” The position performed by the justice system in patrolling gender and sexual disapprobation and those seeking sanctuary and accountability from the police is a nauseating experience. Similarly to how victims of rape are approached when seeking help consequent to what has been done to them, LGBT people invariably disclose that the police frequently focus on them rather than their aggressors, challenging their narratives and condemning them for bringing these incidents onto themselves. Oftentimes casualties of hate crimes are exposed to even further discriminatory verbal abuse from law enforcement authorities. For the LGBT community, dependency on the police and criminal legal system for protection isn’t a choice because in doing so they further put themselves at risk of adverse repercussions.
Through the integration of more improved laws in place for protecting those impacted by hate crimes and a deeper, more integral approach that goes beyond the legality level, we can make our society a safer place for non-conforming individuals. We require more than just a reform within the legal system, but additionally a reform within society to accept others that are unconventional and are unlike us. More than anything, we need social reform because even if we had more preferable hate crime laws, that is just at the legal level and would fail to reach a societal level that would diminish these attacks brought out on the LGBT community. Furthermore, although slavery and Jim Crow laws were abolished years and years ago and are presumably a thing of the past, the black community still experiences acts of racism brought out on them duly to the fact of only skin color. Similarly, we can see if there is not a shift in ideas at a societal level, these attacks will continue to occur.
All things considered, social reform is a very challenging task as we are still experiencing crimes against people of color when laws prohibiting such things were outlawed years ago. It seems as though older generations are stuck in their old ways as one would say, “you cant teach an old dog new tricks.” Our younger generations are more progressive in our ideas that as individuals we are all different and that’s what makes the world go round. As with slavery and the Jim Crow laws, as time progressed, things have improved and there have been less and less of hate crimes committed against people of color. Likewise, what I propose is that we continue to try to enforce the current hate crime laws we have at the legal level and with passing time, I believe people will begin becoming accepting of people don’t share identical characteristics to theirs.