Gay experiences with crime and violence

Earlier I showed that homosexuals are more likely to become serial killers. Taking serial killers to be the extreme right-tail of the group's entire distribution across the violence spectrum, it stands to reason that on average they're more psychopathic than normal males.

What about on the victim's side? You always hear about how bullying is so widespread against gays. But the General Social Survey says otherwise. I split male respondents into those whose sex partners in the past year were only female vs. not heterosexual. It turns out that queers were a tiny bit less likely to have ever been punched or beaten in their lives, 52% vs. 56% for straights. Also, they were equally likely to have been shot at or been threatened with a gun, 33%. (The comparisons do not change if we restrict respondents to urban-dwellers.)

So much for the idea that violent people are more likely to target gays, a la the moral panic over fag-bashing. I think it's just because gays are so emotionally stunted that getting punched is some kind of end-of-the-world thing that they have to broadcast a sob story about.

That idea is confirmed by looking at how afraid men are to walk the streets of their neighborhood at night. Obviously we have to control for the fact that gays are more likely to live in urban, hence more dangerous areas. It turns out not to matter which definition of "urban" we use, so I left it as open to include the greatest sample size (the 100 largest Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and "other urban"). Compared to straights, gays are more than twice as likely to be afraid to walk their local urban streets, 49% vs. 23%.

The only evidence I found for gays being more subject to crime is for robbery and burglary. Again looking just at urban-dwellers, in the past year 7% of straights vs. 14% of gays had been the victim of burglary (I'm fighting off a joke here…), and 2% of straights vs. 5% of gays had been forcefully robbed. Maybe this is due to their being drawn to the more run-down ghetto parts of town, so that the "urban" control is missing that finer difference in where they live. That could also explain some fraction of the difference in how fearful they are of their streets, although certainly not such a yawning chasm.

Overall then, the idea that queers are any more subject to violent or even property crimes is totally bogus. I'm certain that they got made fun of more growing up (and into adulthood, back in the good old days before everyone was a pussified homophile). But being so emotionally stunted, they never were able to develop thick skin, and every little remark or dirty look sends them into a neurotic meltdown and public temper-tantrum.

GSS variables used: sexsex, sex, srcbelt, hit, gun, fear, burglr, robbry