New York –
Today, representatives from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) responding to the Georgia Supreme Court’s striking down that state’s hate crimes law by noting that had the law not fallen victim to legislative homophobia during its passage, it might have been able to withstand the challenge that nullified it yesterday.
“The fact is that proponents in the Georgia legislature and community advocates attempted to make the law explicit with respect to the categories of hate they wished for the law to address, but resistance in the Georgia House to the inclusion of “sexual orientation” in that list of categories resulted in a law that was far too vague to withstand judicial scrutiny,” said Clarence Patton, NCAVP’s Acting Executive Director.
“Ironically, a bill that was intended to address violent and destructive acts of hate and bias itself became a victim of hate and bias,” said Jeff Montgomery, NCAVP’s Board Chair. “And unfortunately, victims of hate in Georgia were ultimately presented with Potemkin protections that enabled those at heart opposed to standing firmly against hate of any type in the Georgia legislature to appear compassionate. Now that façade has fallen, and hopefully the people and right-thinking legislators of Georgia will get an opportunity to address the epidemic of hate violence in an appropriate and explicit manner,” Montgomery added.
In April of this year, NCAVP released its report on data collected on over 2,000 anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender hate-motivated incidents by the organization in 2003. That report showed an 8% increase in reports of such incidents – including a 26% increase in the six months following the US Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws across the country, and calls for a federal Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, as well as numerous similar amendments in the states. This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its own preliminary statistics on hate crimes in 2003, and noted that there was essentially no change in the number of incidents recorded by law enforcement agencies submitting data to the Bureau. Neither NCAVP nor the FBI receives substantive data from Georgia on hate crimes.
“Given the fact that law enforcement agencies covering less than 20% of Georgia’s population actually say they’re willing to give the FBI any information on hate crimes, and less than half of those actually do, it’s unclear what Georgia’s or the FBI’s plans are to truly track and address the issue,” said Patton. “For our part, next May, we will be holding a meeting and training for LGBT organizations and leaders in the Southeast region to improve the community’s response to and collection of information on anti-LGBT violence,” concluded Patton.
PDFs of all of NCAVP’s Reports on hate violence and domestic violence can be found in the “Publications” section at www.avp.org.
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) addresses the pervasive problem of violence committed against and within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and HIV-positive communities. NCAVP is a coalition of programs that document and advocate for victims of anti-LGBT and anti-HIV/AIDS violence/harassment, domestic violence, sexual assault, police misconduct and other forms of victimization. NCAVP is dedicated to creating a national response to the violence plaguing these communities. Further, NCAVP supports existing anti-violence organizations and emerging local programs in their efforts to document and prevent such violence.
