In October of 1997, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Domestic Violence, the first-ever national report on LGBT intimate partner violence in the United States. At that time, 21 states had enforceable sodomy laws, which made it illegal to engage in consensual same-gender sexual activity, 7 states explicitly did not recognize domestic violence between people of the same gender, and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994, the federal law which provided billions of dollars of funding to support life-saving responses to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, was still in its infancy and years away from supporting LGBTQH survivors of domestic violence. In the fifteen years since that first release of NCAVP’s groundbreaking report, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected (LGBTQH) survivors of intimate partner violence have gone from being virtually invisible and silenced in both the LGBTQH movement and the intimate partner violence movement, to being featured stories in national media outlets, and at the center of national political debates about domestic violence services for survivors.

For the past three years, NCAVP has been the premiere national LGBTQH organization working to ensure that an LGBTQinclusive VAWA is passed.¹ As a result of NCAVP’s legislative advocacy for the reauthorization of an LGBTQ-inclusive VAWA, NCAVP witnessed a sea change in the national dialogue on LGBTQH intimate partner violence. In 2011, Congress extensively and publically debated the inclusion of LGBTQ protections within VAWA, citing NCAVP’s data exhaustively, and resulting in a sharp increase in media reports and public conversations on LGBTQH intimate partner violence. Our data and tireless advocacy resulted in Senate Bill 1925, a VAWA reauthorization bill that is the first piece of federal legislation that includes non-discrimination provisions on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity to successfully pass through the Senate. Unfortunately, NCAVP’s work is not done. The House of Representatives refused to acknowledge the pervasive experiences of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking within LGBTQ communities and on May 16, 2012, the House passed a bill without protections, not just for LGBTQ survivors, but also for immigrant survivors, Native American survivors, and survivors from communities of color. As of the writing of this report, Congress must still reconcile these two bills in conference, and NCAVP remains committed to doing all we can to ensure that these LGBTQ provisions exist within the final bill and to ensure that LGBTQH communities will never again be left out of national conversations on intimate partner violence.

NCAVP continued several projects in 2011 to increase safety for LGBTQ survivors of violence including our multi-year policy advocacy with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to enact LGBTQ-specific non-discrimination provisions for DOJ grantees and to increase comprehensive data collection about the experiences of LGBTQ survivors of violence. This advocacy resulted in significant dedicated funding from the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) and the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) to support national LGBTQ training and technical assistance projects. In 2011, NCAVP launched our National LGBTQ Training and Technical Assistance Center funded by OVW, providing critical support and tools to non-LGBTQ victim service organizations across the country to meet the needs of LGBTQ survivors. That same year, OVC awarded NCAVP a national training and technical assistance demonstration initiative, which will measure the impact of targeted training and technical assistance to increase LGBTQ competency within non-LGBTQ anti-violence organizations.

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