LOS ANGELES -- An 18-year-old gay man from Texas allegedly slain by a high school classmate who believed his friend was making advances toward him. A 31-year-old transgender woman from Pennsylvania found dead with a pillowcase around her head. A 24-year-old lesbian from Florida purportedly killed by her girlfriend's father, who disapproved of the relationship.
The homicides are a sampling of hate crimes in 2010 against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people compiled by a national coalition of anti-hate organizations.
The report, released Tuesday, showed a 13 percent increase over 2009 in violent crimes committed against people because of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity or status as HIV-positive, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects.
Last year's homicide count reached 27 - up from 22 in 2009 and the second-highest number since the coalition began tracking such crimes in 1996. Of those killed, the data show, 70 percent were minorities and 44 percent were transgender women. The attacks show a higher level of brutality, the report concludes.
The trends, said Jake Finney, project manager with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, one of 43 groups that participate in the coalition, "will not change without raising awareness of this brutality and taking affirmative steps to address transphobia."
Not all the crimes were classified by law enforcement as hate-motivated, in part because some states have no such statute. In other cases, the coalition's member organizations pushed police to recognize the hate bias.
Among those, Finney said, was the case of a transgender man who was attending a Los Angeles area university and was attacked in a campus bathroom.
"The attacker used a sharp instrument to carve the word 'It' in the victim's chest, and campus police were not clear that the word 'It' was a slur and indicated anti-transgender bias," Finney said. "It took a great deal of advocacy to have them classify that incident as a hate crime."
