Anti-gay hate crimes up 24%

After posting about the reported attack on a Sacrmaneto gay man after the CA Supreme Court's decision, we added the "good news" that at least hate crimes against queer people have been trending down. The statistics were fairly stale at that time, using information from 2006. Sadly, a few days later an updated report came out:

A report released Tuesday shows that violent attacks on members of the LGBT community nationwide grew by 24 percent in 2007 over the previous year. The 78-page report was prepared by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs with input from more than 30 of its members across the U.S. The number of incidents of anti-LGBT violence rose from 1,486 in 2006 to 1,833 in 2007, based on reporting from the exact same reporting regions as the year prior. Additionally, 2007 had the third highest murder rate in the past 10 years that NCAVP has been compiling the report with murders more than doubling from 10 in 2006 to 21 in 2007. LGBT people also reported a 61% increase in sexual assaults perpetrated as hate crimes. Part of the increase is attributed to an increase in the willingness of LGBT people to report hate crimes. [NCAVP]

We've heard from readers of The Valley's Other Fruit that anti-gay physical violence in Napa is rare (thank God), but that verbal abuse (especially in the High Schools) is much more common. Have you ever been a victim or witness of an anti-gay assault?