Campaign Launched Urging Gay Latinos Report Hate Crimes

Latino gays and lesbians who are victims of hate crimes will be encouraged to fight back through the courts and through counseling in a campaign started Thursday by a Los Angeles advocacy group.

The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center will use billboards, magazine ads and fliers in English and Spanish to urge Latino homosexuals to report verbal slurs as well as physical abuse to its Anti-Violence Project.

Many Latino victims are afraid to report gay-bashing because of cultural pressures, the language barrier and worries about deportation, said Gwenn Baldwin, executive director of the center.

By not taking steps to stop the abuse, she said, the victims open themselves to further attacks that typically escalate in danger.

Verbal slurs are considered “hate incidents” and are ominous because they are usually the precursor to hate crimes, Baldwin said.

The campaign, financed with a three-year, $112,000 grant from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, was kicked off with the help of Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles).

Villaraigosa, who recently introduced legislation to establish a statewide system for schools to report incidents of hate violence on campus, said Latino gays have “suffered for too long in silence and in isolation” because of language barriers.

“Hate is learned and it can be unlearned,” Villaraigosa said at a news conference in Hollywood. “We have to stop it before it grows and matures, and we must be vigilant for signs of its malignancy among our children and then be proactive in its cure.”

The campaign will center on 60 billboards in East Los Angeles, Silver Lake, Hollywood, West Hollywood and Long Beach, officials of the center said.

Spanish-language ads will also be placed in gay and lesbian publications. The advertising will display the numbers of two new toll-free hotlines--one in English and the other in Spanish--for hate crime victims.

Baldwin said the campaign will seek to establish “a zone of comfort and safety” for Latino hate crime victims who may in the past have been wary of governmental and institutional authorities.

The program will offer mental health counseling for those harassed because of bias against gays, bisexuals or AIDS victims, said center spokeswoman Angela Lemire. Hate crime victims will be referred to law enforcement agencies.

Baldwin said relations between the gay community and the Los Angeles Police Department and the West Hollywood sheriff’s station have improved in recent years.

Gays are also fortunate to have a district attorney’s office that operates a hate-crime suppression unit, said Roger Coggan, the center’s legal services director.

“But that’s part of the problem we face. Whether real or believed, some think that law enforcement will not be sympathetic with them or deal with them in their own language,” Baldwin added.

Center operators pointed to the case of an 18-year-old Latino from Pacoima victimized by neighbors who started with slurs and progressed to dumping blood and feces in his driveway. Eventually, the situation escalated into gunfire when the his car was shot up, officials said.

“It can take a long time to get up the courage to come forward,” Baldwin said. “We hope to change that.”