Results tagged “hatecrimes”

19-year-old Puerto Rican teenager Jorge Mercado was stabbed, dismembered and beheaded last week by 25-year-old Juan Martinez Matos, and Matos has since confessed to the crime using the gay panic defense. Matos was allegedly out looking for women in an area known for prostitution, and he met Mercado, who was there dressed in drag. Upon discovering that Mercado was a man, Matos stabbed him, and proceeded to dismember the body in a rage.

The definition of the federal hate crimes law might finally get expanded to include sexual orientation, as the House of Representatives approved the bill yesterday, which was an attachment of the $680 billion Defense Authorization Bill. The Senate could vote on the bill as soon as next week. Obama has said he will sign it into law -- unlike his predecessor, and Pelosi said this legislation has been on her agenda for two decades.

On Saturday, a man entered a gay support center in Israel, killing two and injuring "at least 10." Most of the victims, according to BBC News, were young teens.

A surge in anti-gay hate crimes has been reported in Santa Clara County for 2008, representing a three-fold increase over 2007. Both LGBT activists and the Assistant District Attorney for the county attribute the rise to the ubiquity of gay marriage news, and warring propaganda on both sides of the Prop 8 debate which occupied lawns, lampposts and headlines throughout the year.

While not nearly as exciting as receiving top honors as the best city for tourists to walk slow on city sidewalks, or best city in which singles can hump, on Monday the FBI just awarded SF as the city with the largest reported number of hate crimes in 2006. According to Bay City News (via SF Crime): With a population of approximately 746,000, had a total of 94 reported hate crime incidents in 2006,...