By Lisa Keen
Amnesty International says its study of four major U.S. cities found "serious police abuses" and levels of hate crimes against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.
The report, Stonewalled: Still Demanding Respect, was released March 23 and is based on research collected by Amnesty International and other groups between 2003 and 2005.
The research focused on four U.S. cities – Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Antonio – but also included efforts to survey police departments in other major cities. Many of those departments, including Detroit, failed to respond to Amnesty's request for information.
Amnesty says its research "clearly shows that serious police abuses, including gender-based violence amounting to torture and ill-treatment, against the LGBT community persist."
The report also noted that in Chicago in 2003 and Los Angeles in 2002, "LGBT people were the second largest group targeted for hate crime."
Examining surveys conducted by others, Amnesty noted that one survey found that 61 percent of LGBT people who were also ethnic minorities reported being victims of violence by family members. Another study, conducted by the Rhode Island Task Force on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Youth, found that "nearly half of young LGBT people end up having to leave their homes because of their families' reaction to their sexual orientation or gender identity." Yet another study suggested that "up for 40 percent of homeless young people are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender."
Amnesty International is a globally recognized human rights watchdog organization, which prepares reports to document human rights abuses.
In its report last month, Amnesty said it conducted three surveys of law enforcement agencies, conducted over 170 interviews, and collected over 200 testimonies in preparing the report.
The report notes that, as of March 2005, only "16 states and the District of Columbia" had laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in both the public and private sectors, and an additional 11 states prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation against state employees. (In January of this year, Washington became the 17th state to adopt a comprehensive anti-discrimination bill.)
Amnesty also examined ordinances in the largest city of each of the 50 states and found that, of the 41 cities that prohibited discrimination in areas such as employment and housing, only 26 prohibited sexual orientation discrimination and only 14 prohibited gender identity discrimination.
Amnesty said the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 2003 report on hate crimes showed that 19 percent of the roughly 7,500 hate crimes reported were motivated by hatred for the victim's sexual orientation.
The report urges federal, state, and local governments to pass and enforce laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also urges public officials "at all levels" to "publicly condemn" human rights abuses of LGBT people.
