![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The California Assembly late Thursday passed legislation to limit the use of the so-called gay panic defense.
If a defense attorney attempted to use the argument that a client committed a crime out of panic because the victim were gay or trans a judge would be required to instruct the jury that the use of societal bias, including so-called "panic strategies," to influence the proceedings of a criminal trial is inconsistent with the public policy of the State of California.
The Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act passed the Assembly on a 45 - 32 vote along party lines. Two members did not vote and 1 member was absent. The bill now moves to the Senate.
Araujo was a transgender teenager from Newark, Calif., who was attacked and killed in 2002. Defense lawyers in the trials of her killers claimed their clients acted out of panic after having sex with the teen and then discovering she was born biologically male.
The Assembly bill was authored by Assemblywoman Sally J. Lieber (D-San Jose).
"This is a critical step forward in the effort to rid our courtrooms of bias," said Lieber following the vote. "We must ensure that California's criminal justice system treats all victims equally."
... In 2004, the criminal trial of the three men accused of attacking the teen ended in a mistrial, following several weeks of defense attorneys asserting that the defendants "panicked" upon learning that Araujo was transgender.
Their arguments, largely based on stereotypes about transgender women, were framed to play on societal bias against transgender people. If successful, this panic strategy could have resulted in a conviction for the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, rather than first- or second-degree murder as was sought by the prosecution.
from California Assembly Votes To Limit 'Gay Panic' Defense (thanks topamscoffee for the link)
Jan. 27th, 2006
rabbit hole
Jan. 27th, 2006 04:29 pmIt all seems so clear to me now.
Fiery tendrils wind through my awareness, strings of an interwoven drama that plays out as events unfold. If i could quiet the chatter in my head, i could sing you the symphony of it all. We will have to settle for this little bit that i can translate into words.
This morning, i had a compartment on the bullet train all to myself on the ride from Everglade to Riverscradle. The silence inspired me to stillness, and i watched a large, luminescent purple hekka bird languidly gliding over the treeline. In the distance i saw a stone circle that had been left long ago by the piloip among the wild reeds and mvowzhounva trees -- one of the many stone circles that had called to us through the nyi across unimaginable distances and brought us here.
Stillness is the root of awareness. And that was how it all fell into place, starting with a throbbing at the base of my spine. The train, the bird, the circle, the trees, all fell away into a melange of being. I transcended time and space and felt at once the Big Wow, the moment of cosmic awareness just seconds after the Big Bang when the universe became a single big mind, this moment the evernexus of holomovement and interbeing, this moment where the patterns were simultaneously created and perceived, folded away in order that they can be explicated in relativistic spacetime as shards of Mind pass through the kenoma.
I understand now what i have to do. I don't expect you to understand what is going to come next, because you can't. You are not yet capable of it. Unless you remove yourself far, far away from boxes and alphabets and right angles and timetables and digital circuitry, your awareness is unimaginably hobbled; and your link to the stillness of the Root of All, your link to oneness with the evernexus, is numbed.
Why do you think the first holy places were circles and not rectangles? Why do you think the first temples were round, instead of rectangular? And, once you understand the answer to that, consider why rituals of words and sound replaced contemplation in silence.
IT WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT. It was by deliberate design, intentional revolt against the patterns set in place at the evernexus. It made of us an abrogation, numbed, unaware, cut off, capable of the most incredible cruelties against life and love.
That is all for now, i will explain more later, in small chunks so that my transmissions through the nyi are not detected. But you will hear more. Or, better yet, seek the stillness yourself.
Happy birthday, Lewis Carroll
Fiery tendrils wind through my awareness, strings of an interwoven drama that plays out as events unfold. If i could quiet the chatter in my head, i could sing you the symphony of it all. We will have to settle for this little bit that i can translate into words.
This morning, i had a compartment on the bullet train all to myself on the ride from Everglade to Riverscradle. The silence inspired me to stillness, and i watched a large, luminescent purple hekka bird languidly gliding over the treeline. In the distance i saw a stone circle that had been left long ago by the piloip among the wild reeds and mvowzhounva trees -- one of the many stone circles that had called to us through the nyi across unimaginable distances and brought us here.
Stillness is the root of awareness. And that was how it all fell into place, starting with a throbbing at the base of my spine. The train, the bird, the circle, the trees, all fell away into a melange of being. I transcended time and space and felt at once the Big Wow, the moment of cosmic awareness just seconds after the Big Bang when the universe became a single big mind, this moment the evernexus of holomovement and interbeing, this moment where the patterns were simultaneously created and perceived, folded away in order that they can be explicated in relativistic spacetime as shards of Mind pass through the kenoma.
I understand now what i have to do. I don't expect you to understand what is going to come next, because you can't. You are not yet capable of it. Unless you remove yourself far, far away from boxes and alphabets and right angles and timetables and digital circuitry, your awareness is unimaginably hobbled; and your link to the stillness of the Root of All, your link to oneness with the evernexus, is numbed.
Why do you think the first holy places were circles and not rectangles? Why do you think the first temples were round, instead of rectangular? And, once you understand the answer to that, consider why rituals of words and sound replaced contemplation in silence.
IT WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT. It was by deliberate design, intentional revolt against the patterns set in place at the evernexus. It made of us an abrogation, numbed, unaware, cut off, capable of the most incredible cruelties against life and love.
That is all for now, i will explain more later, in small chunks so that my transmissions through the nyi are not detected. But you will hear more. Or, better yet, seek the stillness yourself.
Happy birthday, Lewis Carroll