A report released this week by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found a huge increase in anti-LGBTQ+ hate, threats, and violence in the US, UK, and Europe, which researchers frame as a backlash to twenty years of positive progress.

The report provides an overview of anti-LGBTQ+ trends from the last five years, examining issues both online and in the real world. “After two decades of gains for LGBTQ+ visibility and rights in many countries, anti-LGBTQ+ targeted hate and rhetoric are on the rise,” say ISD’s Guy Fiennes and Paula-Charlotte Matlach of ISD in the report. “Offline, there has been a surge of reported hate crimes and book bans, alongside a wave of government and legislative actions targeting LGBTQ+ rights (with a focus on trans people). Online, LGBTQ+ individuals face coordinated harassment campaigns, a rollback of digital protections, and systematic erasure from AI training data and moderation.”

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ISD defines anti-LGBTQ+ hate as “activity which seeks to dehumanise, demonise, harass, threaten or incite violence against an individual or community based on their LGBTQ+ identity,” as well as activity that discriminates against the community or those perceived to be part of it and activity which erases LGBTQ+ voices or rolls back LGBTQ+ rights and protections. This includes everything from hate crimes to book bans to online censorship.

According to ISD, there has been a surge in hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people, with the FBI reporting that 20% of hate crimes in 2024 were “motivated by an anti-LGBTQ+ bias” for the third year in a row. GLAAD reported 918 anti-LGBTQ+ “incidents” in 2024, with a shockingly large proportion of those, 48%, targeting the proportionally smaller trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming community. The group notes that LGBTQ+ people are 5 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime in the US than non-LGBTQ+ people.

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Similarly, over a 5-year period in the UK, ISD tracked overall increases of 50% in anti-trans crimes and 18.1% in sexual orientation-related crimes, with a notable peak in 2021-2022. Additionally, ISD points out that many anti-LGBTQ+ crimes in the UK may go unreported.

In wider Europe, ISD found that workplace discrimination was down and that LGBTQ+ people were increasingly likely to be open about their identities. However, that has correlated with an increase in violence and harassment, including more bullying at schools.

As part of their study, ISD included evaluations of the anti-LGBTQ+ actions taken by respective governments and how that might influence or reflect hateful sentiments in the country. The US has seen a huge increase in anti-LGBTQ+ bills over the last decade, and the anti-LGBTQ+ actions of the current administration are extensive.

To a lesser degree, the researchers cite the UK’s Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman and the promised policies from the growing Reform Party, which largely follows the same playbook as the U.S. government. In some parts of Europe, things are more extreme, as Hungary recently banned Pride parades, and Georgia has banned same-sex marriage and adoption.

When it comes to the online world, ISD paints a picture of a worsening landscape, one with deep real-world connections. The report explains that “US-based violent extremist accounts and groups that targeted LGBTQ+ communities showed that online hate often spiked in response to real-world events and political developments.” That aligns with some of the responses to the death of Charlie Kirk.

The ISD researchers cite a 2022 survey from the Digital Youth Index that suggests LGBTQ+ youth are twice as likely as non-LGBTQ+ youth to experience online abuse from strangers. Yet, many social media platforms have been rolling back LGBTQ+ protections and “broadly undermoderate anti-LGBTQ+ hate content and overmoderate content from LGBTQ+ individuals.”

That overmoderation has been exacerbated by an increase in AI moderation tools that disproportionately remove reclaimed LGBTQ+ slurs that are being used self-referentially. This results in censorship and erasure of many LGBTQ+ creators.

The ISD report also points out that all of this hate affects those outside of the LGBTQ+ community as well. Non-LGBTQ+ people who don’t conform to traditional gender stereotypes have been targeted by anti-LGBTQ+ people, such as so-called “transvestigators.” Librarians have been the targets of threats and harassment for refusing to remove LGBTQ+ books, and school board officials have reported an increase in abuse from anti-LGBTQ+ activist groups.

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