Traditionally, bias crime scholarship has been heavily influenced by theories on group threat and intergroup relations. Informed by this framework, recent research has undertaken the task of examining the effects of contextual predictors on crimes motivated by sexual orientation. Such studies theorize that the percentage of same-sex couples and gender inequality may represent a transgression of conventional gender roles and traditional family values, which may foment anti-gay hate crimes to reverse such contravention of heterosexual hegemony and heterosexist ideals. An important constraint of this research resides in the reliance on official data, a practice plagued not only by underreporting and underrecording but, also, by an inability to conduct rigorous investigation of underlying gender dynamics. In this study, we go beyond existing research by utilizing a restricted version of the 2005-2015 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which we merge with external datasets. Using a series of survey regression models, we examine whether the effects of contextual characteristics on hate crime victimization based on sexual orientation vary by the gender of the victim and the gender of the offender. The results demonstrated a negative interactive effect of the gender and marriage equality laws, as well as a positive interactive effect of the gender and gender economic inequality. Additionally, we identified three-way negative interactions between the gender of the victim, percent young males, and gender economic inequality, and between the gender of the victim, percent young males, and percent same-sex households. Being a male offender augmented the effect of gender economic inequality, but this effect diminished in places with higher levels of young males. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of threat theory and underscore the significance of heteronormative power structures and intersectionality in predicting hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation.

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