Today the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) released a report, A Crisis of Hate: Mid-Year Report on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Hate Violence Homicides.
For 20 years, NCAVP has released national research reports on the ways LGBTQ and HIV-affected communities experience hate violence. Within these reports, NCAVP shares information about anti-LGBTQ homicides for the previous year. However, in just August of 2017, NCAVP has recorded the highest number of anti-LGBTQ homicides in our whole history of tracking this information.
- As of August 23rd, 2017, NCAVP has recorded reports of 36 hate violence related homicides of LGBTQ and HIV affected people, the highest single incident number ever recorded by NCAVP.
- This number represents a 29% increase in single incident reports from 2016.
- So far in 2017, there has been nearly one homicide a week of an LGBTQ person in the U.S.
NCAVP has decided to issue this report early in hopes that it will raise awareness of the crisis of fatal violence against LGBTQ and HIV affected communities, and will compel people to take action to end this violence. Some key findings include:
- The victims of these hate violence related homicides have overwhelmingly been transgender women and queer, bi, or gay cisgender men.
- There was a significant increase of reports of homicides of queer, bi, or gay cisgender men, from 4 reports in 2016 to 17 reports in 2017.
- In August of 2017, NCAVP has already collected information on 19 hate-violence related homicides of transgender and gender non-conforming people this year, compared to 19 reports for the entire year of 2016. 16 of these homicides were of transgender women of color.
NCAVP hopes that this sharing this information now will encourage people to reject anti-LGBTQ bias whenever it occurs, and to resist any hateful rhetoric or policies put forward by this administration or by legislators.
“We are calling on decent people across this country to speak out against hateful speech, threats, and violence against LGBTQ people whenever it occurs. We call on elected officials and policy makers to reject hateful legislation such as Religious Exemption bills and so-called “bathroom bills.” And we call on everyone to stand up to our current administration and congress and let them know that harmful policies or legislation against any marginalized group will face the full force of our united opposition.”
– Beverly Tillery, Executive Director, New York City Anti-Violence Project
Read and download and share the full report.
The time for addressing this crisis of hate is now.