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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   23949 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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I am a little confused as to how this fits into your argument. Surely this is a sound legal decision in the world where transphobic hate crimes aren't meaningfully a thing

If you pass a law saying that Jewish defendants are not permitted to use the excuse "I killed that child so I could drink his blood at Passover", that would be a sound legal decision in the sense that no Jew would use that excuse anyway. But the obvious effect of that is not on convictions, but as propaganda against Jews.

Are there many laws generally about the acceptable set of arguments you can put in front of a jury? "Ban the X Defense" IMO is usually trying to appeal to some sense that this was an affirmative defense (see self-defense law), not "you can't ask the jury to consider this". The only one I can think of offhand is that directly appealing to jury nullification is heavily frowned upon.

Are there many laws generally about the acceptable set of arguments you can put in front of a jury?

Some countries bar the admissibility of evidence that says "yes, I'm going to sleep with this guy and then cry rape, it'll be funny" after a famous case where that was indeed an affirmative defense.

It's very crooked.

Canada did that after a high-profile sexual assault case imploded during trial thanks to the defense catching the accusers lying and colluding behind the scenes to coordinate their testimony. The solution, to prevent such an embarrassment going forward, was to hold mandatory pre-trial hearings where the defense is forced to lay all their cards on the table ahead of time if they want records admitted as evidence, making it even easier for accusers to tailor their testimony.

Laws specifically are rare and generally tied to sex crimes. Court rules are more common, though, and will regularly block entire types of evidence, or even specific framings of arguments.

Also rape shield laws, which prevent a man from arguing a certain act was consensual using evidence that she had a history of consenting to such acts.

Famously a major plot point of the film Cape Fear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Fear_(1991_film)

Where's @ymeskhout when you need him.

My understanding is that defendants have tried to use it, although it's not actually been used to successfully get away with murder in the way activists have tried to claim. If there were actually idiots with one Jewish great-great-grandmother who tried to get off on a religious-freedom technicality by repeating the blood libel, I think most actual Jews would be in favor of banning that line of argument, whether or not any judges had ever bought it. I agree things would be different if the defense only existed as a paranoid trans fantasy, but that doesn't seem to be true.

My understanding is trans panic has been used successfully for lesser charges, but not in a while, and never for murder.

Isn't the trans panic defence a mutation of the gay panic defence, which is no longer accepted? Same for the trans panic one, I imagine, but it is part of the debate around "should you or shouldn't you tell someone beforehand you're trans if you're going to have sex with them?" Those who say "yes" are trying to circumvent the 'trans panic' possibility (get out before anything can happen, if the guy turns violent once he finds out you're trans) and also to avoid 'rape by deception' accusations; those who say "no" are arguing "I am a real woman, it's not gay to have sex with me, why should I out myself for a one-night stand?"

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