Amanda Hess wonders whether media focus on straight victims of homophobic hate crimes reinforces the wrong ideas:
I agree with Watson that increased attention on anti-gay crimes against straights tends to reinforce the narrative that straight people are innocents, while gays are somehow "asking for it," "flaunting their sexuality," or otherwise bringing the crime upon themselves. The victim in the GWU case subtly reinforced that idea in an interview with the GW Hatchet following the attack. "I'm extremely surprised that at such a progressive school such a hate crime would happen," he said. "I'm even more surprised that it would happen to a straight, white male." When we say that anti-gay crimes against gays are surprising—but anti-gay crimes against straights are shocking—we unwittingly empathize with the gay basher.
I understand this argument, but I'm not so sure I agree. Anti-Semitic hate crimes against non-Jews are a similar kind of situation, and I don't think the net effect is to assume that they're shocking because Jews ask for it by being all Jewy. I suspect most people think that the person in question is so blinded by their own hate and bigotry that they're incapable of figuring out who is who, which further emphasizes the arbitrary morality of the distinction they've used to justify violently attacking someone.
