Gays Frequently Harassed in ‘89, Task Force Reports

Gay men and lesbians were frequent targets of violence and harassment in 1989, with just over 7,000 incidents documented nationwide including 62 murders, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said today.

“For the fifth consecutive year, data gathered by the NGLTF indicate widespread anti-gay violence and victimization across the United States,” the group said in a new report.

The task force had reported about the same number of incidents for 1988, and it said there was no clear trend over the two-year period.

About three-quarters of the incidents cited by the Washington-based rights group for 1989 involved verbal abuse or verbal threats of violence, but the task force also recorded 795 incidents of physical assault, concentrated primarily in California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts.

Nineteen percent of all harassment incidents last year occurred on college campuses, a segment of society traditionally viewed as more tolerant than most, the group said in its annual report on harassment of homosexuals.

Bomb threats, death threats in the mail, vandalism, egg throwing and taunts were among the types of abuse inflicted on gay college students last year, the task force said.

Fifteen percent of the anti-gay incidents recorded last year were AIDS-related.