Gay Panic Defense - Details

Details

In the gay panic defense, the defendant claims that they have been the object of homosexual romantic or sexual advances. The defendant finds the advances so offensive and frightening that it brings on a psychotic state characterized by unusual violence.

Guidance given to counsel by the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales states: "The fact that the victim made a sexual advance on the defendant does not, of itself, automatically provide the defendant with a defence of self-defence for the actions that they then take." In the UK it has been known for decades as the "Portsmouth defence" or the "guardsman's defence" (the latter term was used in an episode of Rumpole of the Bailey made in 1980). In Australia, it is known as the homosexual advance defence (HAD).

Read more about this topic:  Gay Panic Defense

Famous quotes containing the word details:

    Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    Then he told the news media
    the strange details of his death
    and they hammered him up in the marketplace
    and sold him and sold him and sold him.
    My death the same.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    Working women today are trying to achieve in the work world what men have achieved all along—but men have always had the help of a woman at home who took care of all the other details of living! Today the working woman is also that woman at home, and without support services in the workplace and a respect for the work women do within and outside the home, the attempt to do both is taking its toll—on women, on men, and on our children.
    Jeanne Elium (20th century)