My first shock -- after the initial trauma of being mugged on a Manhattan street a block from my front door -- occurred when I went to the police precinct for a line-up. Behind a scratched one-way window I recognized the two guys who had leapt out from behind a townhouse stoop, knocked off my glasses, and threw me down between parked cars, ripping one leg of my trousers and tearing off both shoes.

As I watched my mugging suspects interact with a detective, I realized my attackers were gay like me.

I am convinced they had deliberately targeted me -- a gay man walking alone at night. They had counted on my fear of being jumped by straight toughs, and on the probability that, if they were caught, they would walk away with a light sentence, or no sentence at all.

Of course, I was no innocent stranger to gay-on-gay crime. Several years before, while serving on a jury, I'd watched an attorney staunchly defend a young gay hustler I'd seen for years in Greenwich Village as a "nice young kid who had been taken advantage of by some middle-aged homo." The hustler had robbed the old queer and left him for dead, and now his attorney was relying upon the by-now common "panic defense." (A straight youth claims he was so upset by the idea of gay sex he overreacted and become violent.) My co-jurors bought the argument until we reached the jury room, where I revealed my sexuality and told them what I knew of the hustler's past.

The gay hustler and the guys who mugged me were manipulating our discriminatory justice system under which the victimizers of gays have routinely had their wrists slapped or cases dismissed. As gays now become more accepted in our society, this institutionalized bias against us is being challenged. But there is no authority -- from the federal government on down -- willing to establish reasonable rules for treating gays as equals, including in crime. Instead we have a tangle of conflicting laws and principles, often within one jurisdiction.

Don't get me wrong. Unlike black-on-black crime or straight-on-gay crime, gay-on-gay crime is not a major national problem -- yet. One reason is that the small homogenous gay community has always policed itself. We branded and shunned our own. If someone gay robbed or hurt other gays, word got out fast through a communication network we jokingly referred to as "Queen Control." When police needed to track down dangerous gays, they d know where to look and often had the help of the community.

That's all changing. The gay community has expanded outside a few urban ghettos. Gays have moved into small towns and middle-sized cities, into suburbs and rural areas across the nation. No matter where you live, it's likely you've got gay or lesbian neighbors. But that also means the gay community is beyond self-policing and insular networking.

Andrew Cunanan's murder spree  which claimed the life of fashion designer Gianni Versace -- mirrors the shift. Once Cunanan became a murder suspect, law enforcement worked, as it had historically, on his neighborhood, the Hillcrest section of San Diego. But as Cunanan became linked to victims in Minneapolis, a small town north of that city, Chicago, a state park in New Jersey, and Philadelphia, it became clear he was on the move and his movements would be difficult to predict. The FBI had to go beyond scouring gay ghettos.

Ironically, Cunanan almost got away because at long last gays and lesbians are becoming socially accepted in American life. He was able to travel about freely and not call attention to himself as an openly gay man. This is a change from when gays were stigmatized and forced to live closeted lives or only in certain neighborhoods.

Americans demonized gays for years. Churches damned us and politicians scorned us. The entertainment industry invariably portrayed us as capricious, manipulative and even mentally deranged. When we finally stood up for our rights at the 1969 Stonewall Inn Riots -- considered the Bunker Hill of Gay Liberation  we were ridiculed. The New York Daily News and The Daily Mirror ran these headlines: "Hissy Fits in Greenwich Village" and "Limp Wrists Slap Cops!" By the mid-1970s, when gays began appearing at protests and parades in great numbers, derision turned into alarm.

Last summer, perceptions began to change. A series of hate crimes in a short period of time, including the clearly homophobic murders of Mathew Shepard and Billy Joe Gaithers, led to outrage. It's unclear why people jumped so fast, so totally onto the bandwagon. Perhaps they were finally disgusted by such blatant injustices. Regardless of the reasons, public attitudes have finally swung in the gay community's favor. For many in the gay community, this is the day they've been waiting for. But others  myself included -- are as uncomfortable with being angelicized as demonized.

Perhaps we as a society are over-compensating. Let's correct the past but at the same time do ourselves some good. Not by turning gays into angels, but by treating gays like everyone else. How? By electing openly lesbian and gay officials, by supporting equalizing legislation, and quashing anti-gay laws.