LGBTQ people experience violence directed toward their sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression. This violence may be enacted by the state, as in laws prescribing punishment for homosexual acts, or by individuals. It may be psychological or physical and motivated by biphobia, gayphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, and transphobia. Influencing factors may be cultural, religious,
Currently, homosexual acts are legal in almost all Western countries, and in many of these countries violence against LGBTQ people is classified as a hate crime. Outside the West, many countries are deemed potentially dangerous to their LGBTQ population due to both discriminatory legislation and threats of violence. These include most African countries (except South Africa), most Asian countries (except some LGBTQ-friendly countries as Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines), and some former communist countries such as Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia and Serbia. Such violence is often associated with religious condemnation of homosexuality or conservative social attitudes that portray homosexuality as an illness or a character flaw. During the modern period (from the 19th century to the mid-20th century) in the Western world, the penalty was usually a fine or imprisonment. There was a drop in locations where homosexual acts remained illegal from 2009 when there were 80 countries worldwide (notably throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and in most of Africa, but also in some of the Caribbean and Oceania) with five carrying the death penalty to 2016 when 72 countries criminalized consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex.
Brazil, a country with LGBTQ rights protections and legal same-sex marriage, is reported by Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB) to have the world's highest LGBTQ murder rate, with more than 380 murders in 2017 alone, an increase of 30% compared to 2016. Gay men experience potentially fatal violence in several places in the world, for example by ISIS, stoning by Nigeria, and others.
In some countries, 85% of LGBTQ students experience homophobic and transphobic violence in school, and 45% of transgender students drop out of school.
State-sanctioned violence
Historic
thumb|A swiss knight [[Richard Puller von Hohenburg|Sir Richard Puller von Hohenburg and his squire are being punished for their acts of sodomy through being burned at the stake. Zurich, Switzerland. 1482 (Zurich Central Library)]]
The Middle East
The Torah, which contains the basis for the law codes of Judaism, contains, among prohibitions against a variety of sexual relationships in Leviticus, with one verse of prohibition against male-male intercourse in Leviticus 18:22. To contextualize the emphasis biblical authors had for this prohibition compare it to Leviticus 18:19's prohibition against a man having intercourse with a menstruous woman or the eight versus of Numbers 35:1-8 spent on describing city planning. A violent criminal penal code regarding same-sex intercourse is prescribed in the Middle Assyrian Law Codes (1075 BCE), stating: "If a man lays down with his own brethren, when they have prosecuted and convicted him, they shall stay with him and turn him into a eunuch".
Europe
upright=1.35|thumb|left|A 16th century illustration of the execution of five Franciscan friars through fire and torture for sodomy in [[Bruges, Belgium. July 26, 1578]]
Many harshly enacted laws and penal codes that strictly prohibited the practice of sodomy are enforced and reinforced throughout the entire European continent to prosecute and punish those who were found guilty for their criminal offense from the 4th to 12th centuries.
When the entire Roman Empire came under Christian rule beginning with the reign of Constantine the Great, all forms of sodomite activities between individuals (especially those of the same-sex) were increasingly repressed, often with the pain of death. In 342 CE, the Christian Roman emperors Constantius and Constans declared sodomite marriage to be illegal. Shortly after around the year 390 CE. The Roman emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I and Arcadius declared all acts of sodomy to be an illegal criminal offense against the order of human nature in a civilized society and those who were found guilty of it are severely reprimanded and condemned to be publicly burned to death.
Switzerland
The earliest known execution for sodomy was recorded in the annals of the city of Basel in 1277. The mention is only one sentence: "King Rudolph burned Lord Haspisperch for the vice of sodomy." The executed was an obscure member of the German-Swiss aristocracy; it is unknown if there was a political motivation behind the execution.
France and Florence
During the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of France and the City of Florence also instated the death penalty. In Florence, a young boy named Giovanni di Giovanni (1350–1365?) was castrated and burned between the thighs with a red-hot iron by court order under this law. These punishments continued into the Renaissance, and spread to the Swiss canton of Zürich. Knight Richard von Hohenberg (died 1482) was burned at the stake together with his lover, his young squire, during this time. In France, French writer Jacques Chausson (1618–1661) was also burned alive for attempting to seduce the son of a nobleman.
England
In England, the Buggery Act 1533 made sodomy and bestiality punishable by death. This act was superseded in 1828, but sodomy remained punishable by death under the new act until 1861, although the last executions were in 1835.
Malta
In seventeenth century Malta, Scottish voyager and author William Lithgow, writing in his diary in March 1616, claims a Spanish soldier and a Maltese teenage boy were publicly burnt to ashes for confessing to have practiced sodomy together. To escape this fate, Lithgow further claimed that a hundred bardassoes (boy prostitutes) sailed for Sicily the following day.
The Holocaust
In Nazi Germany and Occupied Europe, homosexuals and gender-nonconforming people were among the groups targeted by the Holocaust (See Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany). In 1936, the poet Federico García Lorca was executed by right-wing rebels who established Franco's dictatorship in Spain.
Contemporary
, 64 countries criminalize consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex.
- Iran
- Brunei
- Afghanistan (fourth conviction)
- Mauritania
- Somalia by region, include:
Africa
:Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria (death penalty in some states), Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Asia
:Bangladesh, Aceh (Indonesia), Iraq, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Gaza Strip under Palestinian Authority
Caribbean
:Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Pacific Islands
:Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu
Afghanistan, where such acts remain punishable with fines and a prison sentence, dropped the death penalty after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, who had mandated it from 1996. India criminalized homosexuality until September 6, 2018, when the Supreme Court of India declared section 377 of the Indian Penal Code invalid and arbitrary when it concerns consensual relations of consenting adults in private.
Jamaica has some of the toughest sodomy laws in the world, with homosexual activity carrying a ten-year jail sentence.
International human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International condemn laws that criminalize homosexual relations between consenting adults. Since 1994, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has also ruled that such laws violated the right to privacy guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Criminal assault
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thumb|A group of Argentine [[Travesti (gender identity)|travestis carrying the coffin of their murdered friend, August 1987.]]
Even in countries where homosexuality is legal (most countries outside of Africa and the Middle East), there are reports of homosexual people being targeted with bullying or physical assault or even homicide.
According to the Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB), Brazil's oldest gay rights NGO, the rate of murders of homosexuals in Brazil is particularly high, with a reported 3,196 cases over the 30-year period of 1980 to 2009 (or about 0.7 cases per 100,000 population per annum). At least 387 LGBT Brazilians were murdered in 2017.
GGB reported 190 documented alleged homophobic murders in Brazil in 2008, accounting for about 0.5% of intentional homicides in Brazil (homicide rate 22 per 100,000 population as of 2008). 64% of the victims were gay men, 32% were trans women or transvestites, and 4% were lesbians.
By comparison, the FBI reported five homophobic murders in the United States during 2008, corresponding to 0.03% of intentional homicides (homicide rate 5.4 per 100,000 population as of 2008).
The numbers produced by the Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB) have occasionally been contested on the grounds that they include all murders of LGBT people reported in the media – that is, not only those motivated by bias against homosexuals. Reinaldo de Azevedo, in 2009, columnist of the right-wing Veja magazine, Brazil's most read weekly publication, called the GGB's methodology "unscientific" based on the above objection: that they make no distinction between murders motivated by bias and those that were not. On the high level of murders of transsexuals, he suggested transsexuals' allegedly high involvement with the drug trade may expose them to higher levels of violence as compared to non-transgender homosexuals and heterosexuals.
thumb|Vigil held in Minneapolis for victims of the [[Orlando nightclub shooting]]
In many parts of the world, including much of the European Union and United States, acts of violence are legally classified as hate crimes, which entail harsher sentences if convicted. In some countries, this form of legislation extends to verbal abuse as well as physical violence.
Violent hate crimes against LGBT people tend to be especially brutal, even compared to other hate crimes: "an intense rage is present in nearly all homicide cases involving gay male victims".
It is rare for a victim to just be shot; he is more likely to be stabbed multiple times, mutilated, and strangled. "They frequently involved torture, cutting, mutilation... showing the absolute intent to rub out the human being because of his (sexual) preference".
In the same year in the United States, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data, though 4,704 crimes were committed due to racial bias and 1,617 were committed due to sexual orientation, only one murder and one forcible rape were committed due to racial bias, whereas five murders and six rapes were committed based on sexual orientation.
In Northern Ireland in 2008, 160 homophobic incidents and 7 transphobic incidents were reported. Of those incidents, 68.4% were violent crimes; significantly higher than for any other bias category. By contrast, 37.4% of racially motivated crimes were of a violent nature.
Recent research on university-level students indicated the importance of queer visibility and its impact in creating a positive experience for LGBTIQ+ members of a campus community, this can reduce the impact and effect of incidents on youth attending university. When there is a poor climate – students are much less likely to report incidents or seek help.
Violence at universities
In the United States since the early 2010s, colleges and universities have taken major steps to prevent sexual harassment from taking place on campus, but students have still reported violence due to their sexual orientation. Sexual harassment can include "non-contact forms" such as making jokes or comments and "contact forms" like forcing students to commit sexual acts. Most students who commit sexual violence towards other students do it to boost their own ego, believing that their actions are humorous. More than 46% of sexual harassment towards LGBT people still goes unreported.
Australia
Following a spate of murders of gay men in the 1980s and 1990s, significant advances have been made. Hate speech laws in Australia provide protection in all states against racial vilification, with some additional protections on the grounds of sexual orientation in New South Wales, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. In New South Wales, 'homosexual vilification' is prohibited under the umbrella of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977. In 2011, the Australian Human Rights Commission had reported that there was no federal law protecting LGBT+ Australians from discrimination or vilification. However, with the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Australia in 2017, and sexual orientation anti-discrimination protections in all states, LGBT rights in Australia are now among the most progressive in the world.
Scotland
In 2009, Scotland passed the Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice (Scotland) Act, which made acts of prejudice against Disability, Sexual Orientation and Transgender Status specific offences. This Act requires only a single source of evidence, and those convicted under it must be told upon sentencing both what their sentence will be and what it would have been had prejudice not been a factor.
In July 2017, James Chalmers and Fiona Leverick of the University of Glasgow, submitted their report A Comparative Analysis of Hate Crime Legislation to the Hate Crime Legislation Review which contributed to the Scottish government's publication of its final report Independent review of hate crime legislation in Scotland in May 2018.
While homophobia is still an issue in modern Scotland, particularly in schools, social attitudes towards LGBT+ persons have changed significantly, helped by every Scottish political party leader being vocally in support of equal marriage throughout that campaign. Former leaders of both Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives have been "out" lesbians and current co-leader of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie is openly gay. In the UK Parliament, as of March 2023, Westminster MP for Livingstone, West Lothian, Hannah Bardell was one of 62 "out" LGBT politicians in the United Kingdom.
USA
The United States does not have federal legislation marking sexual orientation as criterion for hate crimes, but several states, including the District of Columbia, enforce harsher penalties for crimes where real or perceived sexual orientation may have been a motivator. Among these 12 countries as well, only the United States has criminal law that specifically mentions gender identity, and even then only in 11 states and the District of Columbia. The resolution specifically mentions a large number of groups, including race, religion, linguistic differences, refugees, street children and indigenous peoples.
Legal and police response to these types of hate crimes is hard to gauge, however. Lack of reporting by authorities on the statistics of these crimes and under-reporting by the victims themselves are factors for this difficulty.
thumb|A speaker leads a sizable crowd in a spoken word, call and response, memorial dedicated to trans women who have been murdered. This memorial happened at the SF Dyke March, June 2019.