Prostitution är ett komplext, världsomfattande samhällsproblem som kan leda till flertalet negativa konsekvenser för den utsatta. I Sverige har köp av sexuella tjänster varit kriminaliserat sedan år 1999 och den svenska regeringen lägger stor vikt vid bekämpandet av prostitution. Trots detta är prostitution ett utbrett problem i Sverige. Flertalet kartläggningar indikerar att fenomenet ökar, framförallt via internet, samt att det tycks gå ner i åldrarna. Tidigare forskning inom området visar att svårigheter med att motverka problemet bland annat beror teknologins framväxt, attityder och normer i samhället och brist på resurser inom rättsväsendet. Syftet med föreliggande studie är att undersöka svårigheter med att förebygga prostitution ur yrkesverksammas perspektiv, samt vad som kan göras för att förbättra det förebyggande arbetet. Genom kvalitativ metod med semistrukturerade intervjuer och en tillämpning av rutinaktivitetsteorin besvaras studiens frågeställningar. Resultatet visar att bristen på personal och kompetens, den ökade tillgängligheten via internet samt porrens påverkan på attityder och normer försvårar motverkandet av prostitution. Därtill visas att ytterligare åtgärder krävs, bland annat tidiga insatser gällande utbildning samt en omarbetning av sexköpslagen. / Prostitution is a complex, worldwide societal problem that can lead to several negative consequences for the victim. In Sweden, the purchase of sexual services has been criminalized since 1999, and the Swedish government allocates great importance to combat prostitution. Despite this, prostitution is a widespread problem in Sweden. Various studies indicate that the phenomenon is increasing, primarily via the internet, and that prostitution seems to be declining with age. Previous research in the field shows that difficulties in counteracting the problem are partly due to the development of technology, attitudes and norms in society and a lack of resources in the judicial system. The purpose of the present study is to investigate difficulties in preventing prostitution from the perspective of professionals, as well as what can be done to improve the preventive work. Through a qualitative method with semi-structured interviews and an application of the routine activity theory, the research questions are answered. The results show that the lack of personal with relevant skills, the increased accessibility via the internet and the impact of porn on attitudes and norms make it more difficult to counteract prostitution. In addition, it is shown that further measures are required, including early efforts regarding education and a adjustment of the Sex Purchase Act. / <p>2021-01-13</p>

Using archival and oral history sources, my dissertation examines the emergence of what is now known as “sexual violence” and responses to it on American college campuses in the post-World War II period. This history has yet to receive a full account of its own. It demands one, national in scope but with campus-specific detail. Bridging historiographies of rape, higher education, and postwar feminisms, among others, my analysis features cases of sexual violence, activism, and institutional and legal developments throughout the US. These cases include early responses to campus sexual violence at the University of Chicago; anti-rape organizing at the University of Michigan, Barnard College, and Columbia University; Title IX litigation in the case of Alexander v. Yale (2d Cir., 1980); and the proliferation of a national campus anti-harassment movement through the advocacy work of the Project on the Status and Education of Women and student organizing at the University of California, Berkeley. Across cases, I show how student activists leveraged feminist and sometimes anti-racist analyses to fundamentally shift understandings of sexual violence and force universities and the state to address the problem. I argue that unprecedented growth in women’s college enrollment and entry into previously closed-off professions, the new feminist movements, and emerging anti-discrimination regulations provided women a context and tools to mold the American university. After World War II, when Black Americans moved in record numbers from the South to Northern cities, campus sexual violence was understood in thinly veiled racist terms as part of a broader crime problem. The perceived crime problem and specter of interracial rape sparked calls for universities to ensure safer campuses. In response, urban universities advanced robust neighborhood renewal and campus security programs. Shortly thereafter, feminists of the 1960s and 1970s developed an anti-rape consciousness and new theories of sexual violence. Students used feminist analyses of gendered power and new knowledge about experiences of sexual violence to shift who was perceived as a threat to campus women, from Black and brown strangers to university faculty and peers. By changing how campus sexual violence was understood, from a threat outside the university to a threat within, activists placed responsibility for rape and sexual harassment with university administrators. Students leveraged anti-discrimination law – namely Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 – to force university administrators and the state to recognize and address campus sexual violence as illegal sex discrimination. In response to student demands, the state began to grapple with the full regulatory implications of Title IX. And universities established policies prohibiting harassment, grievance procedures, and institutions to serve people who experienced sexual violence.

Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur socialarbetare och poliser upplever samverkan i arbetet med att hjälpa personer i prostitution. Kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer gjordes med socialarbetare och poliser, som analyserades med hjälp av tematisk analys. Resultatet visar att viljan för samverkan finns bland socialarbetare och poliser, men att resurser och okunskap om prostitution försvårar samverkan för myndigheterna. Respondenterna beskriver efterfrågan av sex mot ersättning som en viktig del i arbetet med prostituerade och att mer utbildning, kunskap och rutiner behöver upprättas för att en fungerande samverkan ska kunna infinnas. / The purpose of the thesis was to investigate how social workers and police experience collaboration in the work of helping individuals in prostitution. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with social workers and police officers and were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results show that there is a willingness to cooperate among the respondents but that resources and knowledge of prostitutes make it difficult for the authorities. The respondents describe buyers as an important part of the work with the prostitutes and that more education, knowledge and routines need to be established in order for a functioning collaboration to be found.

‘The Body on the Threshold: Histories of Rape in Colonial North India’ analyzes political, judicial, and diplomatic records of sexual violence in the modern Indian provinces of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh from roughly 1820 onward. I explore these colonial archives to reappraise the problem of rape in modern India and how it has come to be conceived and misconceived spatially. With the colonial emergence of India’s contemporary legal and penal system, I argue, a new criminal law of rape transformed public space—local roads, forests, village fields and pastures, railway carriages, and town streets—into constitutively dangerous and exclusionary space, about which a perverse cultural and political consensus prevailed that nothing could be done except that women and girls fear and avoid such space when possible. This notorious and longstanding exclusionary injunction upon mobilities and freedoms in modern Indian social life is a gendered common-sense, and structuring of the commons, that I aim to defamiliarize. As a new, ostensibly ‘decolonized’ criminal code with a restructured rape law comes into force in India this year, I offer a cautionary obituary for the law it replaced, and the past India seeks to leave behind.Bringing a combination of spatial, socio-legal, and micro-historical approaches to bear upon colonial judicial archives, I work tangentially to their central object: the criminal court proceeding. To explore how the jurispathic incentives of colonial criminal law engendered unsafe public environments, I work to pull the concept of rape out of the silo imposed by these court proceedings, which reflect the epistemic distortions of a regime that narrowly prioritized punishing only brutally violent rape upon victims below the age of consent—setting evidentiary precedents that affected the governing of rape in much of the British Empire. Employing sources such as crime reports, police handbooks, diplomatic letters, and native newspapers, I focus on instances of what might be referred to today as ‘stranger rape’: rape committed in ‘public’, often brazenly, at the margins of political conflicts over sovereign power and direct rule, such as border wars, princely revolts, and cattle-smuggling feuds. I recruit histories of short-distance migration and the public/private circulation of women within the marriage system, among others, to counter assumptions about South Asian women’s inherent immobility and seclusion. I also index emerging procedural and forensic technologies of the colonized Indian body politic—which reinforced an understanding of rape survivors as unreliable, and of most rape accusations as fabricated—to local ideas about public safety and state responsibility, which were often premised on caste-differentiated and retributive ethics of justice. I trace how pre-colonial practices of social exclusion, scapegoating, and outcasting—and the complex dispute-resolution systems that mandated such punishments—were absorbed into an ecology of colonial violence and territorial occupation, attempting to emplace the evolving meaning of rape within broader transformations in politics and social life under colonialism. I argue that the authority to sanction rape—to both punish and prescribe—became foundational to jurisdictional and territorial conflicts between propertied castes, local power-holders, and functionaries of the British Indian colonial state.

The purpose of this study was to compare the underlying rationales found in selected Supreme Court cases and briefs of counsel justifying or condemning legal classification by sex and legal classification by race. Political strategies have been developed based on the assumption that racism and sexism are analogous. Yet, in recent years, anti-discrimination law, when used in sex discrimination cases, often has been interpreted and implemented quite differently from cases involving race discrimination. This study, using a content analysis based on "grounded theory," compared per- ceptions of racism and sexism as found in the opinions and briefs of counsel of the United States Supreme Court. The data showed that until the 1970's women were seen as wives and mothers whose place was in the home. Women were perceived as having certain inherent characteristics which made them more vulnerable than men. Special laws for women, therefore, were perceived as justified. On the other hand, there were those who argued equity for women based on fundamental ideals and the notion that women should be seen as individuals, not as a stereotypical composite of womanhood. The efficacy of segregation was argued on the grounds of a perceived belief in a natural antipathy of the races and a fear of violence if there were to be integration. Those advocating integration argued the deprivations caused by segregation. There was a gravity surrounding the race cases that was missing from the sex cases. The race decisions! also, were firmly grounded in the Constitution, which was not true for the sex cases. Fundamentally, blacks and whites were seen as having the same rights even during segregation when they were "separate but equal." Women were never perceived as being the equal of men. They were different and they functioned under a different law. Also, the role of women in the home was primary, not her status in the world outside the home. For blacks, role was never an issue. Rather, for blacks status was the central concern. Finally, the blacks' struggle was perceived as a fight to secure their place in the wider society. The women's place was perceived as in the domestic domain, outside the purview of public concerns. / Ed. D.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Marriage is regarded as one of the most important and universal cultural symbols of belonging, and incorporates a range of privileges that can be acquired in no other way. It is where relationships of desire, politics and economics are fused into personal and public rituals of socially sanctioned connection and inclusion. Yet it draws new boundaries of social inclusion and exclusion or stigmatisation. In this thesis I use narrative inquiry to investigate how seventeen Capetonian queer couples in committed relationships perceive and experience same-sex marriage, and ask whether the Civil Union Act has given them a greater sense of belonging. Sexuality is deeply politicised through gendered disciplinary regimes that impinge on people’s emotional and intimate lives. Sexual politics in South Africa today emerge from a complex history of the sycretisation of widely varying cultural and political discourses, beliefs and practices wrought through colonialism and post-colonial recuperation. The formal protection of lgbti-q identities in the post-apartheid South African Constitution is the outcome of strategic struggles for lgbti-q recognition as human rights. However, formal rights do not necessarily lead to social inclusion as they may not reflect extant cultural values, hence I use the thicker concept of ‘belonging’ as developed by Yuval-Davis to analyse everyday inclusion—a concept which enables me to understand ‘privatised’ and affective dimensions of citizenship shaped by contexts of care and interpersonal intimacy. Worldwide, marriage has long been a central institution in how societies regulate their social and physical reproduction; but marriage also confers privileges which can be accessed in no other way. As in the West, marriage equality was a key aim for lgbti-q struggles in South Africa. But feminists have critiqued marriage as an institution of gendered hierarchy and a site of profound oppression for women. It is at the centre of the private|public dichotomy, and symbolic of women’s differentiated citizenship through, inter alia, the ideology of ‘women as property’. Hence same-sex marriage is deeply politicised in how it upholds or challenges heteropatriarchy. By looking at how a diverse range of same-sex couples in committed relationships perceive and experience same-sex marriage in South Africa, I unravel the ambiguities and contradictions of marriage as a project of belonging for lesbians and gays. Marriage as a sexual politics of belonging is about how lesbian and gay citizens experience equality and dignity in their everyday lives—recognition of them as citizen-subjects, protection of their intimate relationships as well as their struggles for belonging. I engage with the complex outcomes of colonial conquest and post-colonial recuperation on African sexual identities, before turning to an understanding of queer citizenship. I show how belonging is a much thicker concept than citizenship because it accesses our affective relationships. I proceed to use Nira Yuval-Davis’s framework for analysing belonging. She divides belonging into two streams: facets of belonging relating to identities, social locations and political and ethical values; and a politics of belonging. Struggles for belonging are waged around boundaries of inclusions and exclusions, and only become visible when belonging is contested. Projects for belonging are complex and multi-layered negotiations around the boundaries of belonging. Using narrative inquiry, I present the stories of seventeen couples and six key informants to fashion a narrative about same-sex marriage as a project of belonging. I asked them about coming out, and how they met their partners. They also told me about their relationships with children and significant others. We talked about their perceptions and experiences of same-sex marriage, and their views of the Constitution and Civil Union Act. I also asked about their sense of safety as queers and what they thought needed to be done to help queers belong (more). The participants’ most significant sense of belonging derived from having their rights protected in the Constitution. Their sense of entitlement to be who they are, was the outcome of powerful struggles for recognition. The various couples had been in committed relationships for between 8 and 52 years. Some had made use of the immigration status of same-sex partners to be together, which meant they were instantly thrown into ‘marriage’-like situations. Some didn’t want to get married, but 10 couples were married. Except for two couples, all the couples who got married did it primarily for the tangible benefits associated with marriage: through marriage they established formal kinship relationships linked to property and commitment to care. They were generally not interested in the cultural trappings of ‘weddings’, and had modest and quiet ceremonies. All the married couples affirmed that the Act had given them a greater sense of belonging. While all the participants valued formal recognition through the Constitution, the lack of substantive equality needed to be addressed to ensure future belonging for lgbti-q. I concluded that same-sex marriages are powerful social institutions, capable of either upholding heteropatriarchies through homonormative performances, but also capable of subversions. A foundational challenge comes through disrupting the ‘women as property’ exchange embedded in most marital traditions. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die huwelik word beskou as een van die belangrikste en algemeenste kulturele simbole van samesyn, en behels ’n reeks voordele wat op geen ander manier toeganklik is nie. Die huwelik is die kern waar begeerte, politiek en ekonomie verenig in persoonlike en openbare instellings van gemeenskaplike aanvaarding en verbinding. Terselfdertyd teken dit ook nuwe grense van sosiale insluiting, uitsluiting of stigmatisering. In hierdie tesis ondersoek ek wat sewentien Kaapse queer paartjies in vaste verhoudings dink van gay huwelike en hoe hulle dit ondervind, en ek vra of die Civil Union Act hulle meer samesyn (belonging) laat voel. Seksualiteit is uiters polities omdat dissiplinêre sisteme mense se emosionele en intieme lewes reguleer. Seksuele politiek in die huidige Suid-Afrika spruit uit ’n gekompliseerde geskiedenis van ’n samevloeiing van verkillende kulturele en politiese diskoerse, gelowe en praktyke van kolonialisme en post-kolonialistiese herstel. Die formele beskerming van lgbti-q identiteite in die post-apartheid Grondwet van Suid-Afrika, is die uitkomste van strategiese stryde vir lgbti-q herkenning as menseregte. Nogtans het formele regte nie noodwendig gelei tot sosiale insluiting omdat hulle nie die bestaande kulturele waardes weerspieël nie, daarom gebruik ek die konsep van ‘samesyn’ soos ontwikkel deur Yuval-Davis om alledaagse insluiting te ontleed—’n konsep wat my in staat stel om die ‘private’ en emosionele dimensies van burgerskap, die kontekste van sorg en interpersoonlike intimiteit, te verstaan. Wêreldswyd is die huwelik ’n kerninstelling in die regulering van sosiale en fisiese voortplanting in gemeenskappe. Maar die huwelik verleen ook voorregte wat op geen ander manier verkrygbaar is nie. Soos in die Weste, is huweliks-gelykheid ’n sleutelpunt in stryde vir lgbti-q erkenning in Suid-Afrika. Maar feministe het kritiek gelewer teen die huwelik omdat hulle glo dis ’n terrein vir die instelling van geslagshiërargie en diepgaande onderdrukking van vroue. Dit is die spilpunt waarom die verdeling tussen privaat | openbaar draai, en is simbolies van vroue se gedifferensieerde burgerskap deur, onder andere, die ideologie van ‘vroue as besittings’. Dus is gay huwelike polities ingewortel in hoe hulle heteropatriargie onderskraag of aanvat. Deur te kyk hoe etlike Suid-Afrikaanse paartjies van dieselfde geslag hulle toegewyde verhoudings beskou en ondervind, ontrafel ek die raaisels en dubbelsinnighede van gay huwelike as ’n projek van samesyn vir lesbiërs en gays. Die huwelik as seksuele politiek van samesyn is hoe lesbiese en gay burgers in die alledaagse lewe hulle gelykheid en menswaardigheid beleef—dat hulle as burgers erken word, en dat hulle intieme verhoudings sowel as hulle stryde vir samesyn gekoester word. Ek ontrafel die kompleksiteit van Afrikane se seksualiteite deur die gevolge van koloniale verowering en post-koloniale herwinning aan te pak, voor ek na queer burgerskap kyk. Ek bewys dat samesyn ’n meer betekenisvolle begrip is as burgerskap omdat dit ook ons emosionele verhoudings kan aanspreek. Ek gebruik Nira Yuval-Davis se raamwerk vir die ontleding van samesyn. Sy deel dit in twee strome: fasette van samesyn verbonde aan identiteite, sosiale stand en politieke en etiese waardes; en die politiek van samesyn. Stryde oor samesyn word rondom grense van insluiting en uitsluiting gevoer, en word slegs sigbaar wanneer samesyn bevraagteken word. Projekte vir samesyn is ingewikkeld met veelvoudige onderhandelings rondom grense van in— of uitsluiting. Ek gebruik verhaalontleding om die stories van sewentien paartjies en ses sleutelinformante te omskep in ’n vertelling omtrent gay huwelike as ’n projek van samesyn. Ek het hulle gevra oor hoe hulle “uit die kas geklim” het, en hoe hulle hulle minnaars ontmoet het. Hulle het my ook vertel van hulle verhoudings met hulle kinders en belangrike mense in hulle lewens. Ons het gepraat oor hulle sienswyses oor, en ondervindings van, gay huwelike, en hulle sienings oor die Grondwet en Civil Union Act. Ek het ook uitgevra omtrent hoe veilig hulle voel as queers, en wat hulle dink gedoen moet word sodat queers (meer) samesyn kan ondervind. Die deelnemers se grootse gevoel van samesyn was as gevolg van hulle regte wat gekoester word deur die Grondwet. Hulle gevoel van geregtigheid om te wees wie hulle is, het gespruit uit ’n kragtige stryd vir erkenning. Die verskillende paartjies was tussen 8 en 52 jaar lank in vaste verhoudings. Party het gebruik gemaak van die immigrasie wetgewing vir gay minnaars om saam te bly, wat beteken het dat hulle hulle summier in ‘huwelik’-soortige verhoudings bevind het. Party wou nie trou nie, maar 10 paartjies het getrou. Behalwe twee paartjies, het al die paartjies gesê hulle het hoofsaaklik getrou om die tasbare voordele van huwelike te geniet: deur huwelike kon hulle formele verwantskappe skep met besittings en verpligtings tot sorg. Hulle was oor die algemeen nie geïnteresseerd in die kulturele vertoon van troues nie, en het beskeie en stil seremonies gehou. Al die getroude paartjies het gesê dat die Civil Union Act hulle ’n groter gevoel van samesyn gebring het. Alhoewel al die deelnemers die amptelike erkenning van die Grondwet waardeer het, het hulle gesê dat die gebrekkigheid aan substantiewe gelykheid aangespreek moet word om toekomstige samesyn vir gays te verseker. Ek het tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat gay huwelike kragtige gemeenskaplike instellings is wat heteropatriargieë kan onderskraag deur homonormatiewe gedrag, maar dat hulle ook ondermynend kan wees. ’n Fundamentele uitdaging is die moontlike ontwrigting van ‘vroue as besittings’ onderhandelings wat in meeste huwelikstradisies vasgelê is.

The right to be let alone has been developing throughout history to offset the seemingly relentless encroachments by government in efforts to regulate "morality," and by governmental and/or business uses of technological advancements to control the individuals privacy. Thus, the espoused constitutional right of privacy has come to be the way for individuals (and groups) to stave off society's attempts to control or divert the individual from his right to be let alone. This work examines both state and federal court cases in an attempt to show that privacy has come to be a basic, constitutional right to be used against society's intrusions in areas of personal and sexual privacy.

In just over one year since United States v. Windsor— the case invalidating sections of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defined marriage, for purposes of federal statutes, as the “union of man and woman”— more than a dozen states have had their same-sex marriage bans ruled unconstitutional. This suggests a shift in legal meaning; previously successful arguments against same-sex “marriage” now seem irrational as argumentative ground has shifted. Since favorable rulings redefine “marriage” to include same-sex unions, this thesis analyzes Kitchen v. Herbert, a 2014 legal opinion from the United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit, to understand the rhetorical processes underpinning its redefinitional act. That analysis draws on Kenneth Burke’s theories of entitling and constitutions and discusses the rhetorical concepts of terministic screens, casuistic screens, scope and circumference as key features of the rhetoric of the legal opinions. The findings call for a balancing of deconstructive and conventional approaches to legal discourse. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Orientador: Elizabeth Piemonte Constantino / Banca: Renata Maria Coimbra Libório / Banca: Luis Fernando Rocha / Banca: Maria de Fátima Araújo / Banca: Leonardo Lemos de Souza / Resumo: A presença do psicólogo no sistema de justiça se consolidou com a promulgação do Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, há mais de vinte anos; no entanto, muito se discute, atualmente, sobre o seu papel nos casos de abuso sexual infantil. Neste momento de reorganização dos espaços profissionais, definir e valorizar o trabalho interdisciplinar, especialmente na relação entre a Psicologia e o Direito, possivelmente provocará, no meio jurídico, transformações nas ações e nas representações relacionadas à proteção da criança. O lugar do psicólogo passou a ser discutido nessa perspectiva, pois as propostas de depoimento especial para a escuta da criança em situação judicial o coloca na função de facilitador do diálogo entre o juiz e a vítima, em um método de inquirição. Com isso, o aprendizado da interdisciplinaridade é prejudicado, porque o psicólogo tem seu conhecimento científico desvalorizado, assim como as técnicas que orientam seu trabalho são submetidas aos procedimentos e finalidades do Direito. Diante de tal impasse, a presente pesquisa tem por objetivo analisar e discutir as representações dos juízes e dos desembargadores quanto ao papel do psicólogo na produção de subsídios para as decisões judiciais, nos casos de violência sexual na infância. O referencial teórico que embasa as reflexões e análises é a Teoria das Representações Sociais, com enfoque na relação entre a Psicologia e o Direito, exposta no texto dos acórdãos judiciais. Mediante a metodologia da análise documental, foram selecionados 27 acórdãos referentes aos crimes sexuais contra crianças, os quais apresentam critérios semelhantes com respeito ao emprego do laudo psicológico na decisão. Este trabalho evidencia que o parecer psicológico assertivo e explicativo oferece fundamentos para a representação dos juízes e dos... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The presence of psychologists in the justice system became more prevalent twenty years ago with the enactment of the Statute of Children and Adolescents. Today, there is a continued debate about its role in cases of child sexual abuse. At this time of reorganization of the professional field, to define and enhance interdisciplinary work, especially in the relationship between psychology and the law, will possibly provoke, amid the juridical environment, transformations in the actions and representations related to child protection.The role of the psychologist enters the debate in regards to the special testimony for listening to a child's legal situation. This puts him in the role of facilitator of dialogue between the judge and the victim in a method of inquiry. Thus, the interdisciplinary learning is impaired because the psychologist has their scientific knowledge devalued. Also, the techniques that guide their work are subject to the procedures and purposes of the law. Faced with this impasse, this research aims to analyze and discuss the representation of the judges and judges of the high court as to the role of psychologists in the final judgment in cases of childhood sexual violence. The theoretical referential that underlies the reflections and analysis is the Social Representations Theory, focusing on the relationship between psychology and the law, exposed in the text of judicial decisions. Using the methodology of documentary analysis, 27 judgments were selected relating to sexual offenses against children, which present similar criterions regarding the use of the psychological report on the decision. This work shows that the assertive and explanatory psychological opinion offers foundations for the judge‟s representation and judges of the... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

While activists and others have argued that the legitimization of biased attitudes and stereotypes by political leaders foments violence against minority groups, criminological research in the U.S. has focused more on "threat" hypotheses that view hate crime as a retaliatory response to perceived gains or encroachment of targeted groups. Another view suggests that heightened public visibility of hate crimes or other bias issues, usually in the form of media coverage, increases hate crimes. This study compares the effect on anti-LGB crimes of events representing political threat (a court decision legalizing marriage equality) and political legitimization of bias (passage of a ban on marriage equality), both of which occurred in California in 2008. The study also tests effects of media coverage prior to the ban on marriage equality. Results showed a statistically significant increase in anti-LGB hate crimes after the ban on same-sex marriage. There was no effect on anti-LGB crime counts after the court decision to legalize marriage equality, or during the media campaign leading up to the vote to ban marriage equality.