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.

Being Heard

Thanks to Equality NC supporter and volunteer, Tim, for this personal experience.

"I want to relate a recent success story for equality here in North Carolina.

It happened last Tuesday as a result of NOM's marriage discrimination tour stop in Raleigh. That evening I was watching News Channel 14, the Time Warner Cable 24 hours news channel, and they had a "teaser" for the upcoming coverage of the event. I left the channel on in order to see the news coverage.

Overall the news coverage was both fair and positive. The reporter highlighted the fact that there were more than double the number of pro-equality supporters at the event as there were people supporting NOM's anti-equality position.

But, the reporter used the terms "homosexual marriage" and "homosexuals" during the coverage instead of the acceptable terms of "marriage equality," "same-sex marriage," "LGBT," or "gays and lesbians." I was offended by this, so I took action. I immediately contacted News Channel 14 by email through their web site. I asked them to please stop using the offensive language, explained why the language was offensive, explained what terms were acceptable, and referred them to the AP Style Guide for further advice.

News Channel 14 responded positively to me within an hour. They apologized to me, explained that they knew it was wrong, said that it was against their existing policy and was a mistake, said they were already in the process of correcting it, and said they planned to use the incident as a "teachable moment" for their entire staff.

News Channel 14 did the right thing. In fact they thanked me for bringing the issue to their attention and did everything they could to make corrections as swiftly as possible and take the appropriate steps to stop this from happening in the future. I made sure to thank them for their positive response as well.

Moral of the story? One person can make a difference. You just have to believe you can and make the effort."


Thanks to Tim for taking the time and effort to do this and for telling the tale. One person's efforts can result in a positive change that's seen by hundreds or thousands. There's no telling how far-reaching a single positive action will be.

(If something about reporting on an equality issue or LGBT-related story catches your attention, in addition to the standard AP Style Guide, GLAAD has a great Media Reference Guide for gay-positive and affirming language standards, and the Movement Advancement Project offers guides on talking about all kinds of LGBT issues, including relationship recognition and marriage.)

NOM News Roundup

Kudos again to the great grassroots folks who organized yesterday's counter-protest of the so-called National Organization for Marriage's rally yesterday. Equality NC and other participants worked hard to get our message of fairness out to the media with some great results. Here's a quick roundup.

• Time Warner's News 14 covered the rally and included an interview with me in the story.
• WRAL, the local CBS affiliate, has a story including Senate President Pro-Tempore Marc Basnight explaining why the constitution shouldn't be used to make law.
• Josh Ellis covered the story for the NC News Network, and included a blurb on their site and some good video on YouTube.
• It was great chatting with friend of ENC Pam Spaulding, who has great analysis and video up at the Blend. She also did a quick post earlier in the day.
• The Raleigh News & Observer was also on the scene with this report.
• North Carolina Public Radio had coverage after the rally, and reporter Laura Leslie has more audio from NOM's speakers on her blog.
• I talked with the Associated Press's Gary Robertson about the potential impact of the elections this fall on the marriage discrimination amendment. Video from NBC 17 is include on the same page.
• WTVD, the ABC affiliate, ran this story.
• And, of course, the Courage Campaign's brilliant NOM Tour Tracker was on hand to document the event. There's more in this post as well.

That's what we've found. Any more stories we missed? Post 'em in the comments.

NOM comes to Raleigh, North Carolinians protest: A Photo Blog

(Thanks to ENC Communication Intern Matthew McGibney.)

The so-called National Organization of Marriage has spent the summer traveling across the country holding (poorly-attended) rallies in support of marriage inequality, so when they made a stop in Raleigh this morning, Equality NC Executive Director Ian Palmquist and I decided to go over and check out the counter-protest.

Here's a picture of one group (it went down the block too far to get everyone in one shot!):

Equality NC did not organize the counter-protest, which included more than 100 people, but Ian made himself available to local press to make sure there would be a marriage equality perspective to the stories.

The NOM people gave their speeches across the street from us, and we chanted in response. There were no problems at all while we were there, and it was nice to see that we outnumbered them by a considerable margin.

Here's a picture of the NOM lectern before they arrived...


...and here's the area after the NOM people came out (as it were). Yes, that is a sign that says "Straight Pride" attached to a baseball bat. It's probably a good thing the police were there!



No baseball bats for this guy...



...or these people:

Several families brought their children. This kid has a future in sign making...

... but he will never reach the sign-making heights of this woman:

It was nice to see some many people take some time off work to come out and support the cause of marriage equality in North Carolina.