LGBT Rights and their Impact on Anti-LGB Hate Crimes

• In Event: 258 - Section on Human Rights Paper Session. From Seattle to Black Lives Matter: The Changing Landscapes of Human Rights in the United States

Abstract

This paper addresses the research question, is the enactment of national and state civil rights legislation related to anti-LGB hate crimes? Specifically, this research examines the influence LGBT civil rights advances (and restrictions) on rates of LGB hate crimes. Legal advances and restrictions can both be viewed as contributing to LGBT visibility in public life, which serves as a challenge to the heteronormative social structure of society. While many have argued that social visibility contributes to violence against LGBT people, this assertion has never been empirically tested. A fixed effects regression model is used to estimate the effects both state and national level LGBT rights legislation on state hate crime rates. Data for this analysis comes from the Uniform Crime Reports from 1996 to 2014, which is supplemented with LGBT civil rights data and state-level demographic information collected by the author and an undergraduate assistant. Results and implications for these findings are discussed.

Author

• Liz Coston, Stony Brook University