(LifeSiteNews) – According to a brief by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the rates of “violent victimization” were “significantly higher” in relationships amongst people who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual compared to those who were “straight.”
“The rate of violent victimization varied significantly by sexual orientation during 2017-20,” read the report. Entitled Violent Victimization by Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, 2017-2020, it was released in June 2022 and highlighted a significant contrast between violence documented in “straight” relationships and violence documented in homosexual, lesbian or bisexual relationships.
Highlighting data relating to rape or sexual assault, the number of “bisexual” individuals assaulted was 18 times higher than amongst “straight” individuals, and was over twice as high amongst “lesbian or gay persons” contrasted to “straight” people.
Examining domestic violence in particular, which “includes violent victimizations committed by current or former intimate partners or family members,” the report found bisexual relationships experienced “about eight times” more violence than in straight relationships.
Meanwhile, domestic violence occurred at “more than twice” the rate in “lesbian or gay” relationships when contrasted with straight relationships.
Even more specifically, the report found that for “intimate partner violence,” which is violence performed by “current or former intimate partners only,” the figure was over 8 times as high among “bisexual persons” than “straight persons.”
Outside of relationships, the rate of violent victimization of males who identified as “gay males” was twice as high as in heterosexual males, with “bisexual females” experiencing nearly 8 times as much violence as “straight females.”
The findings reported by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics are similar to those reported in 2018 by the American Journal of Men’s Health which found that almost half of the homosexual men in the survey reported “some form of intimate partner abuse.”
The same study showed that abusive relationships tended not to communicate about HIV status and posed a greater risk for HIV transmission.
In 2013 it was reported in another DOJ-funded report that homosexual youths were “148 per cent more likely to be physically abused in relationships.”