A new study out this week shows that there have already been more anti-LGBT hate motivated homicides this year than all of 2016.
The report comes from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. The data they present shows that in 2016 there were 28 hate-violence-related homicides of LGBT people. Already this year, there have been 33 anti-LGBT hate violence murders across the country. The date from 2016 does not include the Pulse nightclub terror attack hate crime murders of 49 people.
“The numbers translate to roughly one hate-violence-related death every 13 days in 2016. So far in 2017, the pace of those deaths is at about one every six days,” Buzzfeed reports. At this rate, these hate murders are on track to double last year’s count.
“Fifteen of those who were killed in 2017 were transgender women of color, and at least 12 were cisgender gay men,” Buzzfeed adds. “The reports came from all over the US, from Texas to New York to Wisconsin.”
“I think whether it’s an increase in reporting, an increase in violence, or some combination thereof, it should be a wake-up call for us across our communities that hate violence is not going away, it’s certainly not decreasing, and it’s symptomatic of larger and deeper problems in our society that we still haven’t addressed,” Beverly Tillery, executive director at the New York City Anti-Violence Project, told BuzzFeed News.
Old Dominion University assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice Vanessa Panfill says there’s a backlash against LGBT people.
“That backlash has been encouraged in part by the Trump administration walking back Obama-era guidances and policies that were LGBT-inclusive, such as supporting trans students’ rights and signaling a ban on allowing trans people to serve in the military,” she says.
“As a result, transgender people across the country are relying on courts to decide if they’re allowed to access bathrooms in line with their gender identities — a decision the Supreme Court decided not to weigh in on when it sent a landmark trans rights case back to a lower court earlier this year.”
Earlier today, a state of emergency was declared in Charlottesville, Virginia after white supremacists and counter protestors clashed there. Many of the “Unite the Right” rally attendees attended the rally up showing their faces, unlike the KKK who historically appeared in public cloaked.
They don’t need to hide their faces anymore because Donald Trump has taken this movement mainstream.