A number of years ago where I lived, a Gay man’s body was found dead on a pile of tires with his eyes burned out with cigarettes. After an investigation the person responsible was apprehended. Instead of getting a sentence matching the crime, his lawyers invoked the Gay Panic Defense, and the killer got a lighter sentence, mainly because, with the Gay Panic defense, the victim is seen as having the greater responsibility for the act.
Simply defined, the gay panic defense is a legal defense that claims someone acted in a state of violent temporary insanity because of unwanted same-sex sexual advances, the same-sex sexual advances being so offensive and frightening that it brings on a psychotic state characterized by unusual violence.
It doesn’t have to involve physical contact; a look will do.
The fact that many cases, as in the one mentioned, are the result of the killer having knowingly entered a Gay bar where one would be extremely naive to think there was no possibility that after a long, intimate conversation with one patron and then bringing him home, that patron might assume there was mutual intent, and makes a move in that direction. It is only after the invitation to “go to my place” is accepted and the person invited acts on what is assumed to be the reason for the invite that the defendant alleges to find the same-sex sexual advance to have been so offensive and frightening that it brings on that psychotic state characterized by unusual violence.
In other cases the “panic” ensues when after entering a Gay bar, someone approaches the person because he is seen as being attractive and available.
Women, who venture into places like Hooters, know this happens.
Sometimes the murder is committed when a person comes out to a friend, or when a Gay person tells someone they know that they find them attractive even if there is no expressed desire to act on that.
The Trans Panic Defense is applied in cases of the assault, manslaughter, or murder of a transgender individual with whom the perpetrator engaged in sexual relations unaware that the victim was transgender until seeing them naked. In these cases, defendants claim they have been provoked to a violent response that is “almost primal”.
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Both panic defenses are also convenient when used to get away with a premeditated assault or murder.
It gets sympathy for the perpetrator, who is seen as a victim with no chance of hearing anything from the real victim.
In the United States only California, Illinois, and Rhode Island ban the use of these defenses, which means there are 47 states that allow it.
But even then, California, a liberal state, only banned the Gay and Trans Panic defense in 2014.
Illinois banned it in 2017, with Rhode Island following in 2018.
The action of the killer that progressed from knowingly entering a place where the possibility of attracting the interest of someone exists, engaging in a conversation that becomes more intimate, and then either extending or accepting an invitation to go further, and even the possibility of doing that to commit a premeditated murder or assault is dismissed put of sympathy.
Yes, it’s a thing.
And it needs to stop.