Deborah Lipp

Via yesterday’s Chronicle, today prosecutors and law enforcement officials are meeting in San Francisco to discuss how to combat the ‘gay panic’ defense. In recent years a fair number of brutal killers have used this defense to get reduced sentences or (in at least one case) get off altogether. It’s a close cousin to the ‘she was asking for it’ rape defense, a way to minimize the brutality of the crime by shifting blame onto the victim.

The most high-profile case in recent Bay Area history is that of Gwen Araujo, a trasgendered teen who was murdered by three boys two of whom had had sex with her before discovering her gender identity. Fortunately, the jury didn’t buy it that time.

It’s encouraging to see law enforcement getting behind this effort (the conference is organized by our own DA, Kamala Harris, and co-sponsored by the workerscompcalaw.com law group and national district attorneys’ associations). It wasn’t that long ago, historically, that law enforcement was more committed to prosecuting people for being gay than to prosecuting crimes against gay people.

One of the guest speakers is a living example of this shift:

Former Laramie, Wyo., police Chief Dave O’Malley, who investigated the killing of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in 1998, will discuss his own experience of what he calls “losing his ignorance.” Both defendants in that case received two consecutive life terms. Their attorneys included the gay panic argument in opening statements but the judge barred it during trial.

O’Malley describes himself as homophobic before that case, never hesitating to tell an anti-gay joke or story.

“Getting involved in the investigation and interacting with Matt’s friends and family got me thinking for myself and figuring out that I was wrong,” he said.

We still have a long way to go–the fact that the ‘gay panic’ defense exists at all, and is effective, illustrates that–but it never hurts to acknowledge how far we have come.

[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]