Reconceptualizing Anti-LGBT Hate Crimes as Burdening Expression and Association: A Case for Expanding Federal Hate Crime Legislation to Include Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to bring to the attention of researchers, scholars, and politicians an important point about the harms to LGBT victims resulting from hate crimes—one that, in my view, is ignored and is critical to the justifications for allowing bias crime victims to obtain legal compensation for being victimized on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. More specifically, this article critiques the current framing of anti-LGBT hate crimes in scholarship and empirical research and reconceptualizes these crimes as systemic inhibitors to expressive and associative opportunities on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation (this argument will be developed in Part IV).

A Contemporary Review of Hate Crime Legislation in the United States

“…Although transgender individuals have traditionally been lumped together with sexual minorities in hate crime research, their experiences may be quite different than nontransgender sexual minorities (Antjoule, 2016; Walters et al, 2020). Transgender individuals are more likely than sexual minorities to be victims of violent hate crimes and hate-motivated verbal abuse (Walters et al, 2020; Woods, 2008). Even with the differential impact of hate crime on transgender individuals, the inclusion of gender identity as a protected class has only recently been considered a worthwhile addition and remains contentious (Walters et al, 2020; Woods & Herman, 2014).…”