Anti-gay Hate Crimes: Political Threat or Political Legitimization?

• In Event: Poster Session I

Abstract

In the days following the 2016 Presidential election, the Southern Poverty Law Center received hundreds of reports of hate-motivated incidents, some specifically invoking the election. These reports appear to support a commonly held perception that legitimization of biased attitudes on the part of elected officials emboldens potential hate offenders, resulting in increased hate crimes. In contrast, much of the criminological research on hate crimes examines the threat hypothesis, theorizing that hate crimes are motivated by racial and political threats such as population shifts and political developments granting increased rights to outgroups.

This paper uses the quasi-experimental conditions found in California in the year 2008 to test both threat and legitimization hypotheses. In May 2008, a court granted the right to marry to same-sex couples in California. In November of the same year, an amendment banning same-sex marriage passed. Statistical analysis of UCR data on anti-gay hate crime in California will illuminate whether anti-gay crimes were more likely to occur after the court decision, supporting the threat hypothesis, or after the amendment, supporting the legitimization hypothesis.

Author

• Johanna Shreve, Portland State University