Should it be a felony to purchase an underage minor for illegal sex?
For most of us, the answer is a very easy yes. This is not a hard one. You will likely encounter three dozen questions today or tomorrow that will be considerably more difficult to answer. Generally, if someone is asked if there should be severe legal penalties for underage sex trafficking, the response is an immediate, unhesitating affirmative.
Democrats in California feel differently. The state assembly there this past week considered a bill — AB-379 — that would have amended state law to make it a felony to solicit paid sex from “any person under 18 years of age.” In other words, if you seek out and pay a minor for sex — if you engage in child sex trafficking — you would be guilty of a felony.
This should have been an easy move for the assembly; the debate should have taken about 30 seconds and ended with a unanimous vote, passage to the state senate, and a quick signature by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The ink should have still been drying on the bill by suppertime on Wednesday.
Democrats were not so obliging. In fact, they mounted a major opposition to the bill. By the time they were done with it, the bill’s protections for 16-year-old sex crime victims had been stripped from the measure. Democrats added language claiming it was “the intent of the Legislature to adopt the strongest laws to protect 16- and 17-year old victims.” Which is strange since, when given the opportunity to do just that, they refused.
What reason could Democrats have for opposing the bill? Advocates in no small part seemed concerned that the measure could disproportionately affect … LGBT Californians. (Really stop and think about that for a minute.) The ACLU of Southern California claimed in part that similar measures “have been used disproportionately against … LGBTQ+ individuals.” Other opponents of the bill claimed that the measure could be used by parents who are upset that their children are in “LGBTQ relationships.”
One group claimed there were concerns “about the way that automatic felonies [could be] levied against older teens in relationships with other minors.” State Sen. Scott Wiener, a longtime LGBT booster, argued on social media that “sending an 18 year old high school senior to state prison for offering his 17 year old classmate $20 to fool around isn’t smart criminal justice policy.”
We should all pause for a minute and consider what is being argued here. At best, Democrats and other opponents of this bill are attempting to defend underage prostitution as a normal feature of young relationships (it’s not). At worst, they are revealing, inadvertently, that LGBT individuals are apparently regular participants in the sex trafficking of minors.
Which one is it? They should probably decide what their position is and stick with it. But it bears repeating that the bill concerns itself only with paying for sex with minors. Any criticism of this bill in the context of the “relationships” it may affect cannot ignore that simple fact.
Most functioning adults consider it a very bad thing when underage children are paid for sex, no matter the circumstances. Opponents of this bill are acting as if they are defending meaningful, intimate relationships, rather than innately harmful, exploitative, and dangerous ones. “Think of how this will negatively affect 18-year-olds who bribe their underage friends for sex!” is not persuasive.
Beyond that, are we really supposed to believe that it is actually all that common for an 18-year-old to “offer his 17-year-old classmate $20” for sexual activity? Is this something that happens regularly in schools in California, or anywhere? It is not.
One can reasonably assume that it’s far less common for a high school senior to pay a sophomore to “fool around” and far more common for vulnerable young people to be bought and sold by and for predators. Which — it bears repeating — should be a felony!
Democrats carried the day in the dispute, of course, having successfully watered down the bill and slashed its protections for vulnerable minors. But it was too much even for far-left Newsom, who said in a statement that California “should treat all sex predators who solicit minors the same — as a felony, regardless of the intended victim’s age.”
That’s obvious. Except if you’re a California Democrat, apparently. The party has sent an unmistakable message to sexual predators around the country: If you come to California to buy a minor, the state government is prepared to go easy on you.
One news outlet summed up the issue perfectly with the headline: “California Democrats backed into a corner over teen sex solicitation.” Most people, of course, are never “backed into a corner” on this question: They’re opposed to teen sex trafficking, wholeheartedly, and they act like it.
It’s a pathetic disgrace that Democrats in California can’t be bothered to do the same.
Calvin Sherman is the pen name of a writer living in the southern United States. The Federalist verifies the identity of its pseudonymous authors.
