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

• Main Author: Jordan Blair Woods
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Gonzaga Library Publishing 2007-01-01
• Series: Journal of Hate Studies
• Subjects: violence; advocacy groups; hate-motivated
• Online Access: https://jhs.press.gonzaga.edu/articles/49

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 crimesone 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).