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Apr. 20th, 2008 07:45 amI wrote another instalment in my LGBT history blog -- the invention of the "gross indecency" laws.
I've been reading about some pretty horrendous gaybashing in Pink Blood. I think the worst is a 50-year-old school teacher named David Curnick who was stabbed 146 times in Vancouver by a guy he'd picked up.
The guy claimed at his trial that Curnick had molested him as a child until it was established that Curnick couldn't have met the murderer before said murderer was 19 years old at the earliest. The murderer had also previously attacked two trans women.
Claims of having been molested are one of the most common defences in gaybashing, it seems -- so common that I suspect defence lawyers coach their clients on it. Even when it's proven to be impossible in court, the media frequently portrays it as if it happened that way anyway.
It seems gaybashers have also learnt that if they take something during the crime -- say the wallet, or credit cards, or a microwave oven -- they can get their charge downgraded from a hate crime to a robbery if it comes to trial. Even in a case where the basher tossed the victim's microwave oven in a ditch afterwards (the only thing he took) it was called "robbery."
I've been reading about some pretty horrendous gaybashing in Pink Blood. I think the worst is a 50-year-old school teacher named David Curnick who was stabbed 146 times in Vancouver by a guy he'd picked up.
The guy claimed at his trial that Curnick had molested him as a child until it was established that Curnick couldn't have met the murderer before said murderer was 19 years old at the earliest. The murderer had also previously attacked two trans women.
Claims of having been molested are one of the most common defences in gaybashing, it seems -- so common that I suspect defence lawyers coach their clients on it. Even when it's proven to be impossible in court, the media frequently portrays it as if it happened that way anyway.
It seems gaybashers have also learnt that if they take something during the crime -- say the wallet, or credit cards, or a microwave oven -- they can get their charge downgraded from a hate crime to a robbery if it comes to trial. Even in a case where the basher tossed the victim's microwave oven in a ditch afterwards (the only thing he took) it was called "robbery."