Attacks Based on Gender Identity Up 32.9% from Prior Year, Those Based on Sexual Orientation Up 13.8%; Race & Ethnicity-Based Hate Crimes Remain Largest Category

WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization — sounded the alarm today as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its annual crime report for 2022 showing that anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes were up sharply from the prior year, with a 13.8% increase in reports based on sexual orientation and a shocking 32.9% jump in reported hate crimes based on gender identity

In response to the FBI’s 2022 report, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson released the following statement:

“The rise in hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community is both shocking and heartbreaking, yet sadly, not unexpected. The constant stream of hostile rhetoric from fringe anti-equality figures, alongside the relentless passage of discriminatory bills, particularly those targeting transgender individuals, in state legislatures, created an environment where it was sadly foreseeable that individuals with violent tendencies might respond to this rhetoric. The FBI’s data serves as another alarming indicator of the state of emergency our community finds itself in.

“We also know that this data is incomplete, that too many cities and states are reporting incomplete data, or even no data at all, on hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community. If we’re going to bring a stop to that violence, we need a full accounting of just how many hate crimes are taking place – and that requires every jurisdiction stepping up.”

The FBI’s report noted that there were 1,947 recorded incidents relating to an alleged victim’s sexual orientation in 2022, up from 1,711 the year before, and 469 relating to an alleged victim’s gender identity, vs. 353 the year before. The gender identity category included 338 instances that were specifically anti-transgender and 131 that targeted someone who was gender noncomforming.

Race/ethnicity motivated hate crimes remained the largest category with 56% of all hate crimes. Hate crimes based on religion moved into second, just ahead of sexual orientation.

More than 1 in 5 of any type of hate crime is now motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ bias, and the last two years have been the deadliest for transgender people, especially Black transgender women, that we have seen since HRC began tracking fatal violence against the community.

Even with these horrifying stats, the problem of incomplete data reporting for hate crimes is a longstanding one. In the “Blueprint for Positive Change,” a document released in November 2020 that offered a roadmap toward equality for the then-incoming Biden-Harris administration, HRC called for the Department of Justice to intensify efforts to encourage local law enforcement to report hate crimes statistics annually. While positive steps have been taken by the administration to improve reporting compliance, more is necessary in order to ensure more accurate and complete hate crimes reporting, including making the reporting mandatory.

The FBI’s report comes amid an unprecedented spike in anti-LGBTQ+ state legislation, with more than 550 bills introduced in 43 states, and more than 80 signed into law — more than doubling last year, which was previously the worst year on record. The wave of harmful and discriminatory legislation — some of which was engineered and championed by extremist GOP candidates running for president and their allies — and the concurrent spike in anti-transgender rhetoric and violence prompted HRC in June to declare a national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people for the first time in the organization’s more than 40-year history.

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.

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The LGBTQ+ community has been “exploding” back onto the travel scene in the past year as the COVID-19
pandemic wanes, according to David Paisley, senior research director with LGBTQ-focused Community Marketing
& Insights (CMI).

CMI recently completed its 17th Annual LGBTQ Community Survey, a broad look at the LGBTQ+ community, including its travel habits. Paisley spoke about the survey results this week during a webinar.

Paisley theorized that the LGBTQ+ community was slower to come back to travel than the general population because COVID became such a political issue in the United States.

The survey and other CMI research suggests travel is largely happening at a greater level than before the pandemic among the LGBTQ+ community, Paisley said. That is particularly true of people ages 18 to 54. There is still some reluctance to travel among older survey takers.

In other research Paisley conducts for specific destinations, he often asks where survey takers have traveled in the past 12 months. Statistics for every destination in 2023 are exceeding 2019 across the board, he said.

“I think the LGBTQ community went through a pattern [where] we were actually underperforming for a couple of years, and we’re sort of exploding out of it right now,” he said.

CMI’s Community Survey found that more than half of respondents planned to book a hotel room (57%) or take a flight primarily for vacation (52%) in the second half of the year. Just under half, 49%, plan to take a vacation by car from home. Only 12% said they did not expect to travel for vacation for the rest of the year.

Big cities or metro areas were the most popular destinations for those planning travel for the remainder of the year (55%), followed by a beach destination (40%) and a road trip (37%).

Of those planning to travel during the remainder of the year, 77% will travel within the mainland United States, 19% will go to Europe and 11% to Mexico. Rounding out the top five destinations are the Caribbean and Canada (tied at
9%) and Hawaii (7%).

This year, 14,432 self-identified LGBTQ+ community members completed the survey from April to June.

For more information on the survey go to Community Marketing Insights https://cmi.info/