Systematic Review Characterizing LGBT Murder Victims
16 Studies Report on 2,921 Homicides with Gay and Transgender Victims
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
We are barraged nearly every hour on the mainstream media about the growing LGBT community and the rise of transgenderism. Newsclips invariably show some form of a gathering or protest, depicting anger and in some cases violence. Given all the tensions around the LGBT and transgender movement, I wondered if much had been written about violence in this community. A search of PUBMED found one of the most prominent themes was violent crimes where LGBT persons were victimized.
Mendes, et al, performed a literature search and published an impressive systematic review after refining a large number of potentially relevant studies down to a final group of 16 papers describing 2,921 murders where an LGBT person was the victim.
The authors found that the majority of these crimes were gruesome vignettes of one-on-one homicides using knifes or other weapons and had all the features of hate crimes—many times the perpetrator and the victim knew one another. Mendes concluded that homicide is an important contributor to all-cause mortality in the LGBT population particularly among the highest risk subpopulation, transgender men. Clearly more research is needed into the sociopathology surrounding this growing cohort around the world.
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"...the selected studies confirm that LGBT homicide is a major public health problem..."
For the life of me, I am at a loss to comprehend how homicide is a public health problem. Homicide is clearly a crime, not a health problem. I know this kind of thinking that the study details has been around for many years now, but it just doesn't make sense to classify crime as a health problem.
The only way that I can see that the two can be linked is being more specific about what kind of health is being referred to. If it is mental health, then sure, I can see it, but hasn't there been a big push to de-stigmatize and disconnect mental illness as a cause of violence?
I have the utmost respect for Dr McCullough, but it has been clearly shown that medical journals have been co-opted to promote an agenda. I think the article in question here is an example. What are the numbers of LGBTQ homicides compared to suicides? I imagine that is a much larger issue with this population, and something health professionals should be studying.