~~* Paul's Justice Blog - launched July 4 *~~

Hate Crime: Reference & Statistics

The source of most hate crimes statistics is the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. The FBI's report is 120 pages, and contains some important methodological issues related to counting and reporting hate crimes. 

There's a helpful short summary of 2000 data available from the Human Rights Campaign. 

Advocacy Groups with Hate Crime Info

Rainbow Coalition      

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)

Creating Safe Schools for Gay and Lesbian Students

LAMBDA Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Community Services

LAMBDA Legal Defense & Education Fund

Dr Herek has written one of the few academic books on hate crimes against gays & lesbians. His site has an article he wrote on Matt Shepard, along with information on homophobia and heterosexism

The American Psychoanalytic Association's public forum on homophobia.

Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays: PFLAG

Community United Against Violence

Triangle Foundation (Michigan)

Transgender Equality

National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Report

Human Rights Campaign report

Brandon Teena... 

...was born Teena Brandon, a young woman living as a man and preparing for sex change surgery. Brandon's deception was revealed after an arrest for check forgery and two men in the small Nebraska town raped then killed her. This story is the basis for the feature film Boys Don't Cry and a documentary, The Brandon Tenna Story, both of which highlight the necessity of promoting greater awareness of transgender issues. More information is available through the books of Kate Bornstein or by trying her name in the search box below.

Additional background information on Brandon Tenna is available from Female to Male (other good bios and info) or ABC news 20/20 (surprisingly good).

Nebraska's Highest Court Unanimously Holds Sheriff Accountable for Brandon Teena's Death 

Written Out: How Sexuality Is Used to Attack Women's Organizing, A Report of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the Center for Women's Leadership. [note free download of acrobat/pdf version at bottom of page]

Crimes of hate, conspiracy of silence: Torture and ill-treatment based on sexual identity Amnesty International, 2001

'The manner in which discrimination is experienced on grounds of race or sex or religion or disability varies considerably - there is difference in difference. The commonality that unites them all is the injury to dignity imposed upon people as a consequence of their belonging to certain groups...

''In the case of gays, history and experience teach us that the scarring comes not from poverty or powerlessness, but from invisibility. It is the tainting of desire, it is the attribution of perversity and shame to spontaneous bodily affection, it is the prohibition of the expression of love, it is the denial of full moral citizenship in society because you are what you are, that impinges on the dignity and self-worth of a group.''

Justice Albie Sachs, Constitutional Court of South Africa, 1998