Most government leaders around the world are concerned about hate crime, but there are differences in what kinds of behaviors to include, especially when it comes to acts against homosexuals.
Countries such as the United States, Canada and England include sexual orientation into hate legislation but many countries still have not adapted its laws.
In
the United States, sexual orientation bias made up 13.9 percent of all
offenses within the single-bias incidents, according to the FBI’s
2001 Uniform Crime Report Program (pdf).
Within this category:
- Anti-male homosexual bias motivated 69.3 percent of offenses.
- Anti-female homosexual bias accounted for 15.4 percent.
- And bias against homosexuals as a group, 13.9 percent.
- Anti-heterosexual and anti-bisexual bias accounted for the remainder.
| Candidate's name | Stance on hate crime legislation |
| Carol Moseley Braun | Opposes discrimination based on sexual orientation |
| Wesley Clark | No public position |
| Howard Dean | Defines racial profiling as discrimination |
| John Edwards | Supports adding sexual orientation to hate crime legislation |
| Dick Gephardt | Sponsored past laws; expand federal role over hate crimes |
| John Kerry |
Expand federal hate crimes legislation, assure equal justice |
| Dennis Kucinich | Against all bias; sponsored hate crimes legislation |
| Joe Lieberman | Supports federal hate crimes legislation |
| Al Sharpton | Would add sexual orientation to federal law |
| George W. Bush | Opposes expanding federal law to cover sexual orientation |
| source: CNN.com | |
In Canada hate propaganda was included in the Criminal Code in 1970. Of hate crimes reported by victims in 2000, 37 percent of hate incidents were because of age, sexual orientation, religion, language or disability, according to the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime’s 2002 “Preventing Hate Crimes” report (pdf).
Romania’s Article 200 of the Penal Code called for at least three years’ imprisonment for homosexual relations. It was revised in 1996, but it continues to provide for imprisonment for private consensual homosexual relations where deemed to cause public scandal. Article 200 makes it an offense, punishable by a sentence of between one and five years’ imprisonment, “to entice or seduce a person to practice same-sex acts.”
Parliament proposed reforms to the Penal Code in 1999, including the abolition of Article 200, and it was finally repealed in July 2002, according to Sodomy Laws Around the World’s Web site.
“Hearing statistics like that makes me very grateful to live in the United States, and very scared to move to any other country,” said Carlos Obarrio, a business junior at Florida International University in Miami.
But there still are countries that do not include violence as a result of sexual orientation. France’s data on hate crimes is limited to racial or anti-Semitic incidents. In Germany, hate crime numbers focus on xenophobic and anti-Semitic crimes. And other countries have laws that punish acts of homosexuality.
“I can’t fathom living in a place that does not recognize who I am,” Obarrio said. “I want to be protected, to feel safe in my country.”
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