Pride Begets Violence? Examining the Temporal Clustering of Anti-LGBT Hate Crimes following Gay Pride Celebrations

• In Event: Sexual Assault, Hate Crimes, and Violence Against LGBTQ Populations

Abstract

A wealth of research examines the link between minority group size, visibility, and prejudice. Specifically, scholars propose that increases in the size of the outgroup causes anti-outgroup attitudes to increase. Despite the utility of the theory, empirical support has been mixed. Despite advancements, previous work in this area fails to examine (1) LGBT communities and (2) month-to-month, city-level fluctuations in hate crimes. Indeed, there is paucity of research examining the structural and temporal correlates of anti-LGBT hate crimes. Most often, studies examining anti-LGBT related violence focus on adolescent bullying or comparing incident-level characteristics with other bias-related crimes. Drawing on Blalock’s (1967) group threat hypothesis, this study uses U.S. Census, General Social Survey, and UCR Hate Crime data to understand the fluctuations in LGBT victimization following previously ignored antecedent events: pride celebrations. Preliminary findings report a relationship between pride celebrations and violent anti-LGBT hate crime occurrences. Conditional negative binomial regression models will be used to further examine the link between LGBTQ+ pride celebrations and anti-LGBT hate crimes in a large sample of large, metropolitan cities covering a ten-year time period.

Author

• Kaylin Celine Winchester, University of Missouri - St. Louis