The gay panic defense is a legal defense, usually against charges of assault or murder. A defendant using the gay panic defense claims that he or she acted in a state of violent temporary insanity because of a little-known psychiatric condition called homosexual panic. Trans panic is a similar defense applied towards cases where the victim is a transgender or intersex person. This defense often fails, and has been ruled inadmissible in many jurisdictions because of a complete lack of scientific research to support it.
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Famous quotes containing the words gay, panic and/or defense:
“And I would love you all the Day,
Every Night would kiss and play,
If with me you’d fondly stray
Over the Hills and far away.”
—John Gay (1685–1732)
“Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness!”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)