By Patrick Hanley According to new data released by the FBI this week, hate crimes motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation and gender identity rose by 8.6% from 2022 to 2023. Alarmingly, the spike comes while violent crime was down overall, signaling that LGBTQIA+ people, among others, are increasingly being targeted based on their identity.  Out of the 11,447 single-bias incidents reported last year, those based on sexual orientation accounted for 18.1%; those based on gender identity accounted for 4.3% of the overall total. This makes sexual orientation and gender identity the third and fourth-most common bias motivations for hate crimes. There were nearly 3,000 reported incidents based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 2023 alone. Laws in many states, including Texas, fail to protect the LGBTQIA+ community. In Texas, the woefully outdated hate crimes statues only protect people on the basis of “sexual preference” (an outdated term that suggest a choice in