Reports of hate crimes against gays and religious groups increased sharply in 2008, according to new FBI data released today.
Overall, the number of reported hate crimes increased about 2%. These same figures show a nearly 11% increase in hate crimes based on sexual orientation, and a nearly 9% increase in hate crimes based on religion.
The message: people who are really religious or who think homosexuality is wrong are a violent hate crime waiting to happen. The problem is that the numbers don’t show anything of the sort. This is, at best, editorializing by giving a deceptive title to an non-issue report.
These are just rough numbers:
Total "Hate Crimes" in 2008: 7783
Attributable to Religious Discrimination: 1556.6
Attributable to Sexual Orientation: 1291.98
Total Hate Crimes Involved in Categories: 2848
What comes next in the article seems to imply that perhaps this spike in “hate crimes” is not really happening at all.
The FBI does not compare year-to-year trends in hate crimes, saying the number of agencies reporting changes too much. And in fact, the bureau cautioned that the increase reported today might well be due to more agencies tracking such incidents.
In 2008, 2,145 different agencies reported hate crimes incidents, while the year before 2,025 agencies did this reporting.
In total, there were 7,783 hate crimes reported to the FBI last year, and seven murders were categorized as hate crimes.
The FBI recognizes that this is hard it measure and therefore difficult to draw conclusions from. So what do we really see? We are looking at maybe 300 new “hate crimes” out of a population of 300,000,000. So your chance of being a victim of a “hate crime” is 1/1,000,000. To the people who are victims of these crimes, it is no doubt horrifying just as it is for anyone who is the victim of a crime. These numbers are statistically irrelevant. We see a very small increase in actual numbers of crimes (crimes that are criminal acts regardless of motivation I might add) that is quite possibly attributable in large part to an increase in the number of agencies reporting “hate crimes” (about 6% more agencies reporting) and an ever expanding definition of what constitutes a “hate crime”. Based on this sort of reporting, we can expect an article that highlights “Arrests for false reports of children drifting away in homemade hot air balloons spikes 100% in 2009!”
Even the FBI who compiles the data is cautious to not draw any real conclusions here. No such restraint is shown by the Associated Press. Why is this newsworthy? Not because it is inherently newsworthy but because it advances a particular agenda. That agenda is one that whispers that all devout religious people are inherently harboring violent tendencies. This is a “news” report aimed not at reporting news but influencing public opinion.
I think we all know where this is leading. It can only be a short leap from preaching repentance from sin to accusations of inciting “hate crimes”. This is coming and anyone with their head not in the sand can see it. The question really is not if, it is not even when, it is what. When this time comes, what do we do about it? What do you or I do when being a Christian stops being socially acceptable, when preaching the Gospel leads to real persecution and perhaps prosecution? I know this, men and women who are disciples of Christ will preach Christ crucified in season and out of season, no matter the cost. I actually look forward in some ways to those days; days when being a disciple is going to cost you something. It is way too easy to be a churchy person, to be a “member” of a church and convince yourself that you are right with God. When real persecution arises, I am convinced we will see genuine revival in America.
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