From: speterse%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty)
Subject: Re: "Monsters Among Us", Frontlines, November 10, 1992, PBS
Date: 20 Nov 92 21:22:15 MST
Organization: The Erland Cult

In article <13236@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>In article <1992Nov17.161012.248@hellgate.utah.edu>, speterse%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty) writes:

># ## # Take a look at California's laws on child molestation.  It's
># ## # obvious they are written the way they are to benefit homosexuals.
  
># ##   !!! Are you actually suggesting that legislators purposefully wrote
># ## laws which benefit homosexual molestors? You realize, that would be the
 
># #Sure.  Willie Brown, Assemblyman from San Francisco, has been speaker
># #of the Assembly for many years now.
 
># #[specifics of the bill deleted -- it's illegal to have sex with
># # a female under the age of 18, and a male under the age of 14.]
 
># #The law is not gender specific -- but it's clear that by making
># #sexual intercourse illegal for a girl under 18, but sodomy and
># #oral sex legal for a boy under 18, that the Legislature sought to
># #protect the interests of the homosexual community.
 
># This doesn't follow at all.  While the law may very well have the
># effect of benefitting some parts of the homosexual community, I
># don't see any reason to believe that that was the intent of the law.

># Why not argue that the intent of the bill was to uphold Traditional
># Family Values (it is VERY VERY important that girls remain virgins,
># but boys are allowed to fool around)?  Or that the intent of the bill

>Because the unlawful sexual intercourse law is quite old, while
>the other parts are recently adopted.

This is irrelevant.  In both the old and the new versions of the law, 
causing underage females to lose their virginity is strongly proscribed. 
What has presumably changed are the laws relating to non-virginity-
threatening fooling around.


># was to take account of the fact that heterosexual sex between a young
># adolescent and an adult is not generally considered traumatic if the
># adolescent is male?
 
>Not at all clear.  

What's unclear about it?

An adult male who has sex with an adolescent girl is "taking advantage"
of her, whereas an adult female who has sex with an adolescent boy is 
"initiating" him--at least that's how the popular stereotypes run.  I
don't claim that the stereotypes are true, merely that they are widely
believed, and that it is a perfectly plausible motivation for California's 
age of consent laws.


>It would have been far simpler to have just
>made the unlawful sexual intercourse law non-sexist, or to have
>passed a law prohibiting oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse 
>between an adult and a child under <pick an age#.  

It would have been simpler, and it would have also been manifestly unjust
in a number of very common situations.

An example:  the age of consent and the age of adulthood in a certain state
are both declared to be 18.  I and my SO begin a longterm sexual relationship
when we are both 17.  My SO is exactly one day older than me.  We have sex
on my SO's eighteenth birthday.  My SO is arrested for statutory rape--for
doing something that was perfectly legal both the day before and will be so
the day after.

The most plausible motivation I can think of for the new "complicated" law
is to avoid such situations.


>Instead, they
>left a gender-specific law in place, and passed a new, very
>complicated one that allowed adults to sodomize teenaged boys.

It also allows adults to sodomize teenaged girls.  

--
    "From your signature it is obvious that you are a homosexual"
soren f petersen           :        i AM NOT          :    --Doc
speterse@peruvian.utah.edu :  THE university OF utah  :
"How could I dance with another/When I saw him standing there"  --Tiffany