Great Hate: Anti-LGBT Violence Tops Bias Crimes. Also, Big Homophobes Classified As Official Hate Groups

Both the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Study recently released data on hate crimes for last year.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that gays are far more likely to be victims of violent hate crime than any other minority group. Its conclusion are based on 14 years of FBI hate crime data covering 1995-2008.

The center said that gays or those perceived to be gay are:

• more than twice as likely to be attacked in a violent hate crime as Jews or blacks
• more than four times as likely as Muslims
• 14 times more likely as Latinos.

The FBI's data is here. The FBI notes that "The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crime Prevention Act adds two new categories to our list of biases — actual or perceived gender and gender identity. Our Uniform Crime Reporting Program staff continues to work toward expanding its training for state and local law enforcement on reporting these new categories of biases, and then on incorporating them into our future publications."

In other words, they'll have much more comprehensive and accurate data on anti-gay hate crimes going forward. Still, even before being mandated to collect this data, they found anti-gay crimes to be 18% of all hate crimes (and again, this was before they were actively collecting this data). Of anti-LGBT bias crimes, the vast majority were motivated by bias specifically against gay males.

In other related news, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a long-respected authority on hate groups in America, has added some big homophobic names to their official list of hate groups.

These are noted for "their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling." Just being anti-gay isn't enough — hate groups have to be known to actively and maliciously lie and distort the truth.

Take a look at some of these newly-classified folks. These big names have long tried to argue that they're not about hate, but with their new hate status, they can no longer even pretend to be about anything more than bigotry. They include:

• American Family Association
• Concerned Women for America
• Family Research Council
• Family Research Institute
• Liberty Counsel (affiliate of Liberty University Law School)
• National Organization for Marriage
• Traditional Values Coalition

Take a look at the full list of 18 antigay bigoted intuitions and specific reasons for this classification.

It's good to know where information comes from, as well as who can be trusted, and in this case, 18 groups who simply cannot. Lies can be repeated, but the truth does ultimately out. We gays now have pride, and those homophobes now have, officially, shame.