Law enforcement agencies reported a slight decrease in hate crimes last year, despite an increase against gays and lesbians.

The FBI reported more than 7,600 hate crime incidents in 2007, down about 1 percent from last year.

Racially motivated hate crimes accounted for 50.8 percent of that total. Religious bias was the second-leading motive for hate crimes at 18.4 percent, followed by prejudice against sexual orientation at 16.6 percent. Bias based on ethnicity or national origin made up 13.2 percent.

According to the report, 5,408 hate crime offenses last year were classified as crimes against persons. Intimidation accounted for 47.4 percent of such crimes, simple assaults accounted for 31.1 percent and aggravated assaults for 20.6 percent. Nine murders were reported as hate crimes, the report said.

In addition, the report found that 3,579 hate crime offenses were classified as property crimes.

Within those categories, the FBI report found most hate crimes tended to be anti-black, anti-Jewish and anti-gay, with 62.9 percent of the 6,965 known offenders being white and 20.8 percent being black. The race was unknown for 9.8 percent and other races accounted for the remaining known offenders, the report said.

The FBI report is purely statistical and does not assign a cause for the slight overall decrease or the 6 percent increase in anti-gay hate crimes.