A Question of Honor?

Panic: Queer True Crime

In the television show The Sopranos, the character of "Big P*ssy" was based on a New York or New Jersey mobster targeted because of his sexual antics, but in Italy, there was a similar situation involving a highly respected hitman who stepped out of line by loving and wanting to make a life with the man he loved.

Anthony “Bubbles” Torres was a character, a creation. He tended to amuse and sometimes irritate people. On the night he was killed, witnesses saw the beginnings of a confrontation and Torres's murder. Years later, police struggle to solve the case.

In my research into the history of indecent proposals and indecent advances and the role of the homosexual panic used in court to explain murder, I've learned something new. In the later 1960s and all of the 1970s, there was a rash of robberies targeting gay men. It became so excessive that both Democratic and Republican politicians sought to cool the temperature when it came to some of the laws and rhetoric around homosexuality. Those efforts were shot down, of course, but the awareness on the part of defense lawyers that their clients might just be seen as a thief attempting to exploit a gay man made the homosexual panic defense even more urgently needed.

The cases based on people meeting up on apps are an ever-evolving story. Is it any more dangerous than meeting someone at a bar at 3 am? When imagining an open relationship, neither Scott nor his husband couldn't possibly imagine how it would end.

Filippo Gangitano - Gay in the mob

Anthony “Bubbles” Torres -Murdered on a San Francisco street

Harold St. John - AWOL, Kidnapping, and Homosexual panic

Bobby Scott - Murdered on a Date