Orlando Attack Roils Gay Community, Painfully Accustomed to Violence; New York Times, 6/12/16

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times; Orlando Attack Roils Gay Community, Painfully Accustomed to Violence:

"The gay rights movement, of course, is no stranger to the fear of violence. That includes the days when gay people worried about being branded “faggots” and beaten, whether in small towns or in gay centers like New York; the 1973 arson attack on a gay bar in New Orleans that left 32 people dead; the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. All are cultural touchstones for the community.

In 2015, the F.B.I. reported that 18.6 percent of the 5,462 so-called single-bias hate crimes the previous year were attributable to sexual orientation; 47 percent were attributable to race. But Jay Brown, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, said that hate crimes against gay people were underreported, and that finding accurate statistics was “extremely challenging.”

Movement leaders, speaking anecdotally, said they sensed an increase in violence against gay people this year — perhaps, some said, because of the divisive presidential campaign, or because of high-profile policy fights like the one over the Obama administration’s recent directive requiring schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice.

“I sincerely believe that this is following a trend, that we often see an uptick during presidential elections — particularly when the vitriol increases about our community,” said Lorri L. Jean, who runs the Los Angeles L.G.B.T. Center, a nonprofit advocacy, health and social services organization."