Homophobia And Hate Crime

In the article, How Homophobia Hurts Everyone by Warren J. Blumenfeld, Blumenfeld describes his experience growing up as a homosexual, and how homophobia affected him, as well as his family and peers. To begin, homophobia can be separated into two different catergories, personal homophobia and interpersonal homophobia. Personal homophobia can be described as a personal belief system, or prejudice that homosexuals, bisexual and transgender people are entitled to, should be disliked or remain powerless, due to their desires. They are also sometimes seen as psychologically disturbed, genetically modified or defective and overall, unfortunate human beings. While on the other hand, interpersonal homophobia refers to the personal prejudice or bias that affects relationships within individuals. An example of interpersonal homophobia could be making a joke, name calling, or insulting certain individuals or groups. This can be either verbal, physical or intimidation related.

Hate crime is a motivated violent act by a group or individual perpetrator towards a specific race, colour or religion (Collins, Pg 93,192). For many years, authority figures and the media have ignored hate crime offences towards individuals who identify under the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) umbrella. Up until the 20th century and prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, LGBTQ persons have been victimized in violent crimes based solely on gender identification and orientation. With a myriad of events, cases and unreported individual incidents the burden of proof towards hate crime on LQBTQ increased. The development of North American law towards LGBTQ citizens has improved throughout the last two decades. However, there

Hate Crimes: crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or religion(Federal officials, 2011). Hate crimes have been around for centuries. A hate crime is considered any malicious crime that is derived from hatred towards a certain group of people. African Americans are still victim to hate crimes, even after the Civil Rights movement. James Byrd Jr. suffered a prime example of a gruesome hate crime in 1998, because of his African American descent. Three white men, allegedly, chained Byrd to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him down a gravel road, leaving his body parts severed and bloody (Marty,1998). Recently, a new group of people has been targeted by the hateful view

Many issues impacted by hate crimes can be informed by psychological research. For example, are hate crimes more harmful than other kinds of crime? Why do people commit hate crimes? What can be done to prevent or lessen the impact of hate and bias-motivated crimes? Social scientific research is beginning to yield information on the nature of crimes committed because of real or perceived differences in race, religion, ethnicity or national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender. Current federal law defines hate crimes as any felony or crime of violence that manifests prejudice based on “race, color, religion, or national origin”. Hate crimes can be understood as criminal conduct motivated in whole or in part by a negative opinion or attitude toward a group of persons. Hate crimes involve a specific aspect of the victim’s identity. Hate crimes are not simply biases, they are dangerous actions motivated by biases.

In this Gays and lesbians deserve equal protection against the hate crimes that happen in the world. Aren't we told as young children and also throughout life to treat others as we would want to be treated? So why are some decimated against based on sexual preference? The statistics show the percentages of the hate discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community. The violence that they are pitted against, due to people's discrimination against them, in life. And I will also mention the discrimination that the LGBT community goes through and what they miss out based on sexual preference.

Trump as the president-elect has divided the country more than it has brought it’s people together. ‘There has always been hate and divisions,’ some would say. While this is true, this kind of prevalence has not been at the forefront of the political, personal, social, etc. sphere in a long while. Headlines are becoming more trigger inducing and there has been an uproar of hate crimes across the nation. While both sides have contributed to the hatefulness, the way that the hate is manifested is more rampant among supporters of Trump. This is seen through the way that the hate crime rate has gone up since November 8th. In more ways than one Trump’s election into office has given these people that have hate in them a pass, of sorts, to act on that hate and victimize others.

Critical preface: I choose to explore the hate crime problem in society. The reason I choose this topic is because hate crime is a brutal act against people, property, or society because of the group to which they are members or associate with. The hate crime is one of the most notorious crimes which leads to violent acts causing death and disaster. We need to stop these horrible acts and the solution would be to seek advice from an anti-hate organization which help us reduce hate crimes and factual information can then be spread to the society.

What is a hate crime? Although the definition can vary based on what groups are included (Cogan, 2006, p. 174) the simplest definition would be, violence against a person or group of people based on their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, race or disability (Burgess, Regehr, & Roberts, 2013). Hate Crimes do not just effect the victim but also the community. Those who become victims of hate crime are not chosen at random, it is because of the group they identify with or belong too (Cogan, 2006, p. 174) Hate speech, “defined as words used as weapons to ambush, terrorize, wound, humiliate and degrade” (Burgess et al., 2013, p. 480) another person. Violence is seriously damaging to a victim and the community, but

Humans have long inflicted harm on each other on the basis of characteristics of identity. However, as members of civilized societies began denouncing such practices, notable changes began to occur within the structures of society. Specifically, within the United States, hate crime first became a subject of concern in the political rights and policy domain of the 1960’s Civil Rights era. Since then, crime has been the recurring focus of a slew of new legislation. Most recently, the enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Act of 2009, (the “Shepard -Byrd Act”) the focus of this paper, has transformed the landscape of this social problem.

In 2013, nearly 200 reported cases of sexual orientation-based hate crimes were reported in Canada; of those crimes, 66% involved violence (Watson, 2015). Scott Jones, a young homosexual man was the victim of one of these attacks. The brutal attack rendered him paralyzed. Through the support of family and friends, he was able to collaborate with them to create “Don’t be afraid” in an effort to draw awareness to LBGT violence and help promote acceptance (Jones, 2015). He is able to provide insight through his experiences in the healthcare system such as the roles and collaboration used in his care, as well as being inspirational.

Did you know in 2016 in the district of Columbia LGBT hate crimes increased by 59% almost doubling from what it was in 2015? Hate crimes are not uncommon but they have gotten worse over the last few years. The percent of Gay/Lesbian people in the US is about 3.8% and among this hate crimes are extremely common most taking place in the person's own home.

The town of Laramie needs to confront their collective responsibility of what happened to Matthew Shepard. This simply means that the community in Laramie were to ignorant about how they treat people who happen to be different than them. Without directly knowing they built a community based on social groups who exclude people like Matthew Shepard who aren’t part of the “norm”. Matthew Shepard was disowned by his community in ways such as when one of the community members are asked what they thought about Matthews sexuality and her response was “I don’t give a damn one way or another as long as they don’t bother be.” (6:40)

Hate groups, and hate crimes associated with their ideologies, are a major problem facing Americans. This is evident when observing the increasing number of hate groups becoming radicalized in recent years. For example, hate crimes in major metropolitan areas such as

Matthew Shepard was a young 21 year old gay male who was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead. His murder not only emotionally devastated the small community , but it had a major psychological impact on its residents (ABC NEWS). When a hate crime of this magnitude or any act of violence are committed, the targeted group or community are left feeling

Besides facing discrimination and a variety of challenges in several aspects of life, the LGBT community is still subject of tremendous inequalities in many countries around the world. One of these countries is the Russian Federation, which legally prohibits and penalizes “propaganda” of homosexuality. In other words, public and explicit display of affection among same-sex couples is illegal, and consequently, people liberally demonstrating their homosexuality may experience severe consequences that range from an expensive fine to spending the night in jail. In addition, foreigners such as immigrants, tourists or international students, are subject to deportation from Russian domains.