In two Australian states, you can get away with murder if you say a gay man came on to you.
It's a historic law that's still on the books in South Australia and Queensland. It still has teeth. Just last month in South Australia, the "gay panic" defence was used as part of a successful appeal that granted a retrial to Joseph Lindsay, the killer of Andrew Negre. NSW was the last state to repeal it, in 2014. Every day this law is still on the statute anywhere in Australia is another day a killer could walk free without a murder sentence.
The outrage at such injustice has riled one unlikely campaigner on this gay equality issue: a Catholic priest. While the Australian Catholic Church lobbies hard against marriage equality to MPs, Telstra, or gay chief execs like Alan Joyce, Father Paul Kelly lobbies with just as much fervour from an altogether different angle. He thinks the "gay panic" defence is a "homophobic, demeaning, dangerous insult" to gay people and "allows killers to walk away with paltry sentences".
Father Kelly has labelled Australia an "international disgrace" for allowing wily lawyers to use this archaic provocation defence to get their clients' murder sentences downgraded to manslaughter when the victim was gay, or could be portrayed that way. New Zealand, Britain and California have all wiped away their gay panic laws.
