Call For Queensland LGBT Community To Help End Gay Hate Crimes
Researchers from both Bond and Griffith universities in Australia have called for assistance from the LGBT communities within Queensland to try and help them bring gay hate crimes to an end.
Dr Alan Berman, Socio-Legal Adjunct Research Fellow at Griffith University, who is one of the academics leading this project, spoke of how they’d already achieved a good response ot their ‘Stop Gay Hate Now’ survey, via the internet and Brisbane Pride Fair Day in June, but needed at least 200 more by the end of October if they were to be able to properly gauge Queenslanders’ experience of homophobic violence, and how to provide better protection for the LGBT community.
Once these surveys have been completed, Berman and his fellow researchers, will then collate the results and present them, as a report, in March 2010, which on top of showing the responses to the survey will also contain recommendations for both legal and political institutions in the state to help reduce the levels of violence against the LGBT community.
The results that Berman has seen so far it appears it is an issue that definitely needs dealing with, with a considerable number of LGBT people in Queensland still facing significant levels of violence and harassment, particularly in the country and regional areas. On top of this, results also tend to show that three quarters of these gay hate crimes are never reported, an issue that the Queensland police should definitely be looking to change.
Definitely a worthwhile study, the speed of progress that will follow from this report is likely to be slow, as sadly Queensland has long been one of the least accepting states for the LGBT community in Australia, having not decriminalised homosexual acts between men until 1990. However even if progress is slow, the fact that this report is being produced, and will be seen not only by the state, but the world, means that there is likely to be a lot of support and pressure for the changes that need to be made, to be made.
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Many thanks for drawing international attention to the research recently completed in Queensland, Australia on the nature and frequency of homophobic and transphobic abuse, harassment and violence in Queensland, Australia which attracted over 1,200 responses. We are currently analyzing the survey and writing up the results of our findings. We hope to release an Executive Summary containing the main findings soon. We are also writing a book later this year which analyzes the findings in greater detail and contains wide-ranging recommendations straddling many disciplines, including educational initiatives, law reform, policing responses, and governmental initiatives to help tackle homophobic abuse, harassment and violence in Queensland. We have a facebook site Stop Gay Hate Now in Queensland. Please feel free to join to show your support for our initiative and to keep up-to-date on developments, such as the dates for release of the Executive Summary and forthcoming book. Once again, many thanks for bringing this research to the attention of an international audience.
The findings of our research have now been published in a book entitled ‘Speaking Out: Stopping Homophobic and Transphobic Abuse in Queensland’ by Australian Academic Press. If you google the title, you will be able to order the book and read the articles written about the book.