Same-Sex Marriage and Sexual Orientation-Based Hate Crimes: Violence as Value Expression

Background/Purpose: Because of the strong presence and advocacy of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Rights Movements, gay marriage and marriage-like benefits have been an important topic in many state legislatures' debates. States have passed a variety of laws either banning or allowing same sex marriage (or other similar forms) across the country. However, emerging anecdotal and scholarly evidence suggests that during times of debate, GLBT people are at particular risk of feeling intimidated, being harassed, and even having acts of violence committed against them. However, no study has systematically examined whether or not GLBT are more at risk for being the victims of hate crimes during times when states are debating same sex marriage or marriage-like benefits. This study attempts to fill that gap by examining federal hate crime data and mapping these counted hate crimes onto years of political activity.

Methods: The primary source of data will be the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report (URC) data, which has included a mandate to collect hate crime statistics from state and local jurisdictions since 1990. Also - based on data from advocacy organizations, to map out when political activity has occurred in each state. Then, a series of time points will be created for each state. Year 1 will represent the hate crimes that were committed the year before political debate about marriage occurred. Year 2 will represent the year where a bill was put before the state legislature, and Year 3 will be included to determine if any changes noted in years of debate persist or if reported number of hate crimes return to levels prior to debate. It was hypothesized that in years when marriage is being debated, there will be a spike in reported number of hate crimes.

Results: A repeated measures GLM revealed that the hypothesis was confirmed - in years when gay marriage is considered in the legislature of a state, that state has a heightened probability of reporting an increase in reported hate crimes against GLBT people in that state.

Conclusions/Implications: The impact of public debate about such a hot button issue is important when considering social work with GLBT populations. In this case, the democratic process and having a visible GLBT (and friends) population participating in debate has serious safety issues that need to be addressed. In addition, not just "when" hate crimes will occur (such as in years of emotional debate), but also "where" these increased are witnessed will be discussed. In the long run, these findings can help refocus social service systems as well as local law enforcement toward already at-risk populations who may be even more at risk because of attempted policy change.