Gay panic defense

The gay panic defense or homosexual advance defense is a victim blaming strategy of legal defense, which refers to a situation in which a heterosexual individual charged with a violent crime against a same-sex attracted individual claims they lost control and reacted violently because of an unwanted sexual advance that was made upon them. A defendant will use available legal defenses against assault and murder, with the aim of seeking an acquittal, a mitigated sentence, or a conviction of a lesser offense. A defendant may allege to have found the same-sex sexual advances so offensive or frightening that they were provoked into reacting, were acting in self-defense, were of diminished capacity, or were temporarily insane, and that this circumstance is exculpatory or mitigating.

The trans panic defense is a closely related legal strategy applied in cases of assault or murder of a transgender individual whom the assailant(s) had engaged with, or were close to engaging with, in sexual relations, and claim(s) to have been unaware that the victim was transgender, producing in the attacker an alleged trans panic reaction. In most cases, the violence or murder is perpetrated by a heterosexual man against a heterosexual trans woman.

Broadly, the defenses may be called the "gay and trans panic defense" or the "LGBTQ+ panic defense".