By American Psychiatric Association

Violence against the LGBTQ community has increased over recent years. In 2016, the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando shocked the nation—with a single gunman killing 49 people and wounding 53 others at the gay nightclub. The Pulse attack remains the most extreme assault on the gay community, but it was far from being an isolated case. When the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) released its 2016 annual report, the data showed that it was the deadliest year on record for the LGBTQ community since NCAVP began record-keeping on anti-LGBTQ hate crimes in 1996. However, 2017 proved even worse, with anti-LGBTQ hate crimes rising 86% from 2016. LGBTQ people of color—particularly transgender people—are disproportionately affected by these hate-crimes. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), at least 15 transgender women, all of whom were black, were killed in 2019.