American Bar Association may ban ‘gay panic’ defense -

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/12/american-bar-association-may-ban-gay-panic-defense/



A proposal coming before the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section would permanently render the so-called “gay panic” defense inadmissible in court. According to the dot429 blog, if the proposal is ratified, it will ban defense attorneys from using the sexual orientation or gender identity of a victim against them in court.

Too often, according to dot429, attorneys representing perpetrators of violent acts against LGBT people resort to accusing the victims of “bringing it on themselves” in order to defend their clients in court. The “gay panic” defense says that an LGBT brought violent retribution on themselves, up to and including murder, by sexually propositioning someone who was so enraged by the gesture that they had no choice but to react violently.

It was invoked, unsuccessfully in the trail of the murderers of Matthew Shepard and Gwen Araujo. The term “gay panic” was first used by psychiatrist Edward J. Kempf in his 1920 book Psychopathology, in which he described it as “a distinct stage in the psychoses.” However, it is rarely used in modern courts since no one has able to verify its existence as a genuine psychiatric phenomenon.

As dot439 pointed out, “If merely being sexually propositioned was a legally acceptable reason for killing someone, countless thousands of heterosexual men would be at severe risk for being murdered by women they made a pass at.”

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