Michigan House passes ban on gay & trans panic defenses

The Michigan state House has approved a ban on gay- and trans-panic defenses. The ban passed 56-53 in a Democrat-led, party-line vote. It is expected to pass the Democrat-led state Senate, barring any procedural barriers.

While gay- and trans-panic aren’t officially legal defenses, defendants use them to help mitigate their sentences for murder. They’re essentially claims of temporary insanity, diminished capacity, or self-defense in which murderers say they flew into a lethal rage after a gay or trans individual sexually propositioned them, threatening their sense of safety and identity.

Related:

Democrats introduce federal bill to ban the LGBTQ+ panic defense

“No one’s sexual orientation or gender identity is a defense for assault or murder,” Rep. Chris Pappas said in introducing the bill.

Michigan House Speaker Pro Tempore Laurie Pohutsky (D), who is bisexual, said the ban is especially necessary now considering how often it is used to justify violence against Black, transgender women. Most of the reported anti-trans murders each year are committed by men with firearms, some of whom accuse the murdered women of having “hidden” their trans identity before coming out and propositioning them.

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“The root of the matter, the whole defense is based in the thought that trans and LGBTQ folks are less human than other victims, which is why it’s so important to ban the use of the defense,” Pohutsky told UpNorthLive. “I think a lot of people don’t realize that it’s a problem, but I think that’s because they don’t realize how vulnerable the community has been up until recently.”

The bill will now head to the state Senate where Democrats hold a 20-18 majority. Most bills in the Senate can become law through a simple majority vote, but procedural maneuvering can result in some bills being referred back to a committee or needing a two-thirds vote to pass.

Gay and trans panic defenses have been banned in 16 states. Both the American Bar Association and the National LGBT Bar Association advocate the banning of these defenses nationwide. Democrats introduced such a bill in the U.S. Congress in 2023, but it’s unlikely to become law due to Republican opposition.

These bans don’t prohibit queer panic defenses from being used in court. Rather, they require judges to read instructions telling jurors to “ignore bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion in making their decision.” The bans also educate district attorneys’ offices about queer panic strategies and how to prevent queerphobia from affecting trial outcomes.

Hornet reported that defense lawyers will use such defenses in hopes of getting first-degree murder charges reduced to second-degree (non-premeditated) murder or even manslaughter (a murder caused without deliberately lethal or malicious intent).

The gay panic defense (and its twin, the trans panic defense) was invoked in the trials following the 1993 murder of trans man Brandon Teena, the 1995 murder of Jenny Jones guest Scott Amedure, the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, the 2008 murder of 14-year-old Larry King, and the 2016 slaying of 32-year-old Daniel Spencer. Spencer’s murderer, his 69-year-old neighbor James Miller, received only six months in jail and 10 years probation for stabbing Spencer to death after he allegedly tried to kiss Miller.

Critics of such defenses say that they essentially blame queer people for their own murders by claiming that they provoked their attackers. They also seek to play off societal queerphobia while reinforcing and promoting negative stereotypes of queer people as sexual deviants and predators.

David McConnell, the author of American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men, says the gay panic defense is also sexist, a cover for toxic masculinity, and just a defense for attacking already vilified second-class citizens:

“’Gay panic’ is not and shouldn’t be a special category. It can be upsetting for men to be the object of unexpected, unwanted desire, but it can be upsetting for women, too, and they have to deal with it much more frequently,” McConnell wrote. “As a legal defense, it’s certainly a cop-out. It’s complete bulls**t … The real issue is that when we say ‘gay panic,’ we put the focus on the group that’s been victimized and not on the source of the violence, which is really the nature of masculinity itself.”