GAY PANIC. Can it really be true that there's such a thing as a "gay panic" defense, "wherein "the defendant claims that he or she was the object of romantic or sexual advances by the victim...[and] found the propositions so offensive and frightening that it brought on a psychotic state characterized by unusual violence?" Apparently, there is. According to Wikipedia, "the defense rarely wins acquittals, but it is often successful at reducing culpability and mitigating punishments. In the cases where it does so, the verdict is often cited as a case of jury nullification rather than being one based upon legal fact or precedent." Meanwhile, read Rachel Sklar on the media's utter inattention to a horrific hate crime in Indiana, where the "victims," obviously in the throas of gay panic, responsed to a purported sexual advance by beating the victim, "first upstairs, then downstairs, then in the back of a pickup truck en route to a remote spot where they dumped him, first stopping to snap a cellphone pic and send it to a friend." They left him to die, came back, collected the body, and stored it in a garage for months. But the body wasn't of a white woman, and nor was it pregnant, so the media didn't much care. --Ezra Klein
