Log Cabin Republicans are blasting Vice President Kamala Harris for her handling of a 2002 San Francisco homicide case when she was district attorney that resulted in the defendant serving just five years for killing a 56-year-old gay man and allegedly abusing a 68-year-old disabled man.
Republican former President Donald Trump, who is seeking to return to the White House, spoke briefly about the case during a news conference near Los Angeles last month, and the story gained traction after a New York Post article on the case was published September 28.
Charles Moran, the president of Log Cabin Republicans, an LGBT conservative organization, told the Bay Area Reporter by email on October 1, "Here we have a deranged psycho who was accused of killing an older gay veteran in San Francisco and storing his decomposing body in a bathtub while he pawned his possessions, and a power-hungry District Attorney Kamala Harris who shockingly offered him a plea deal around his 'gay panic' defense and let him walk free after five years to inflate her own conviction rate and advance her own career.
"LGBT voters would be interested to hear Harris try to defend herself," Moran continued, "but that would require her doing interviews with reporters who aren't cheerleading for her. Kamala Harris has spent her entire campaign hiding from her actual record — this tragically unjust case is yet another reminder why."
Log Cabin's affiliated site, Outspoken, featured a lengthy post on the story and included an impassioned video from social media influencer Shawn, who uses one name, on its X and Instagram feeds (@getoutspokenusa, @outspokenusa, respectively). The post interspersed clips of Harris speaking during the Democratic National Convention.
Harris said in an excerpt used in the video, "And that's the kind of president we need right now, someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first."
But Shawn, who describes himself as MAGA with a "mission to deprogram the gays who've been indoctrinated by the left," countered, "She has only ever cared about one thing: advancing her political career."
As the B.A.R. previously reported, San Francisco resident Gary Lee Ober, 56, was killed by James McKinnon, 37, in 2002. McKinnon confessed to the killing first to police and then to the B.A.R. in a jailhouse interview. McKinnon said he acted in self-defense to fend off a sexual assault. Witnesses told the B.A.R. that McKinnon was flush with money after the killing. Police said he stole money from Ober's bank account and pawned items of value from his apartment as Ober's body rotted in the bathtub for weeks. McKinnon turned up the heat in the apartment apparently to help speed decomposition and covered Ober's body in baking soda to help absorb the smell of the rotting corpse.
Harris had been accused by critics for holding a "fire sale" on homicide cases after she became San Francisco's district attorney in January 2004 by offering plea-bargains, downgrading homicide cases from murder to manslaughter or even lesser charges, to inflate her conviction rate.
In the New York Post article, one of the assistant prosecutors assigned to the case, Elliot Beckelman, told the paper that "gay panic" had been a factor in the decision to offer a plea deal to Ober. "His defense was of a sexual provocation," Beckelman told the Post. "Unfortunately that was prevalent 20 or 25 years ago, back then it was not an uncommon defense ... I don't have any regrets on how this went down."
When she became California's attorney general, Harris worked to outlaw the gay panic defense, a strategy employed by perpetrators that effectively condones violence against LGBTQ people by blaming the victim.
The B.A.R. reached out to Beckelman who responded in an email, "I'm sorry but I won't be able to help you. I have virtually no recollection. I tried telling that to the NY Post."
In the Outspoken video, Shawn noted an X post from Harris in which she boasted about eliminating the gay/trans panic defense in California.
"That is all a bunch of gaslighting," he said. "Kamala was totally fine with the gay panic defense when it cleared cases and helped boost her record as DA. How can you claim to stand with the gay community when you gave a man a slap on the wrist for murdering one of its members? Kamala turned her back on the gay community when it mattered most."
No one from the Harris campaign responded to numerous requests from the B.A.R. The campaign also did not respond to the New York Post. The B.A.R. reached out to several LGBTQ-focused Democratic associations for comment. None responded to the B.A.R.'s inquiries.
The nation's largest LGBTQ rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign, was among the groups that didn't respond to requests from the B.A.R. for comment. It enthusiastically endorsed Harris and noted she fought against the gay/trans panic defense. In its endorsement statement, HRC noted that Harris "has been a champion for LGBTQ+ equality for decades: from leading the fight in San Francisco against hate crimes and her work in California to end the so-called gay and transgender 'panic defense.'"
In describing her role as a prosecutor, Harris said in her DNC speech, "I've only had one client, the people, and I'll tell you, as a prosecutor, the only thing I ever asked them, 'Are you OK?'"
Those words ring hollow for Log Cabin Republicans.
"But she didn't care that Ober wasn't OK," Shawn said. "She didn't care that Ober's friends and family weren't OK. The only thing that she cared about was advancing her political career. While Kamala is traveling around the country bragging about her career as a prosecutor, there are actual people suffering from the actions she took."
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