Legislative Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men

This is an essay about legislatures and about the ubiquitous violence directed against lesbians and gay men in our society. It asserts that a legislature has the power, through debate and through enacting statutes, to portray the "truth" about homosexuality for the general public, who otherwise know little about the reality of gay and lesbian lives. In so doing, legislatures can and, on occasion, do transform homosexuals into social outlaws depicted as deserving of violent treatment. This Essay examines two hate crimes statutes enacted by the Utah legislature in 1992.

The first, the Hate Crimes Statistics Act ("Statistics Act"), mandates the gathering of statistics on the incidence of hate crimes in Utah. The second, the Hate Crimes Penalties Act ("Penalties Act"),' enhances the penalty for certain enumerated crimes committed with a hateful motive. I will focus on the images of homosexuality embodied in the debates over enactment of these two statutes, and the related messages about lesbians and gay men conveyed by legislators to the citizens of Utah.