14 DAY TRIAL // Being different exposes you to discrimination and violence coming from the others. Even if scientists have shown that homosexuality is largely widespread, this does not change the human attitude towards the phenomenon. About 40 % of the gay men and 12 % of the lesbians and bisexuals in the US have been victims of violence or a property crime due to their sexual orientation, as found by a new research.
"This is the most reliable estimate to date of the prevalence of anti-gay victimization in the US. The data demonstrate that crimes against sexual minority adults, especially gay men, are disturbingly widespread." said study's author Gregory Herek, psychology professor at University of California, Davis.
His research was conducted in the fall of 2005 on a nationally representative pool of 662 self-identified gay men, lesbians and bisexuals. The subjects had an average age of 39 and the majority had attended some college. 70 % were white, 16 % black and 12.5 % Hispanic.
21 % of the subjects reported being the target of violence or a property crime, including physical assault, sexual assault, theft and vandalism linked to their sexual orientation. 49 % were verbally abused, 23 % threatened with violence, 12.5 % had objects thrown at them and 11 % signaled housing or job discrimination.
"These data highlight the continuing need for criminal justice programs to prevent and deter anti-gay crimes, as well as the need for victim services that will help to alleviate the physical, economic, social and psychological consequences of such crimes," Herek said.
But the degree of victimization varied among gay men, lesbians and bisexuals. Gay men experienced three times more violence or property crime than lesbians and bisexuals. Both homosexual men and women faced two to four times more housing and job discrimination than bisexuals, which persisted even after Herek made statistic corrections for age, race, ethnicity and education.
"Men are generally more likely than women to be the targets of most kinds of violent crime, and this pattern seems to hold in anti-gay hate crimes as well. The gay men and lesbians in the study were much more likely than the bisexual men and women to be open about their sexual orientation. Their greater visibility probably also makes them easier targets for discrimination than bisexuals." said Herek.
"Previous studies of anti-gay hate crimes have relied on samples that were smaller or not representative of the U.S. population", he reported.