California Democrats Pass Bill Protecting 'Gay Sex' with Minors
CA legislature passes law claiming current child abuse laws 'discriminate against LGBTQ'
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The California state legislature has voted to pass a bill that offers protections to adults who claim to have "consensual gay sex" with minors.
CA State Sen. Scott Weiner, an openly gay Democrat who represents San Francisco, resurrected the bill, SB 145, last month after first introducing it in January 2019.
The Democrat-controlled legislature passed the bill on Monday that will relax sex offender registry requirements for sodomy and other sexual acts with minors.
The legislation seeks to end “discrimination against LGBTQ young people on the sex offender registry,” according to Weiner.
The Democratic lawmaker argues that automatically placing adults on the sex offenders registry for abusing underage children of the same sex is "homophobic."
The legislation would allow “judges discretion over sex-offender registration in all cases involving voluntary intercourse between teenagers ages 14 to 17, who cannot legally consent, and adults who are less than 10 years older.”
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The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
If a man has vaginal intercourse with an underage teenage girl, the judge can decide whether he should be placed on the sex offender registry based on the facts of the case.
But if anal or oral sex, or vaginal penetration with anything other than a penis, is involved, the adult must register as a sex offender — a relic of a penal code that criminalized those acts until 1975, even between consenting adults.
“California’s sex offender registry continues to draw that distinction — an antiquated, outdated, leftover distinction — that somehow oral sex is worse than vaginal sex,” Wiener said, as Neon Nettle previously reported.
He added that such precedent is “horrific homophobia” that is “irrational, and it ruins people’s lives.”
“It makes no sense,” Wiener told The San Francisco Examiner.
Under the bill, which has not been signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, adults who are convicted of having sex with a minor less than 10 years younger than they are would not be automatically added to the sex offender registry, the San Fransisco Chronicle reported.
Though minors cannot legally consent to sex in California, Wiener’s bill would allow a judge to decide whether or not to place an adult on the sex offender registry if a teenager between the ages of 14 and 17 had sex with that adult, according to The Western Journal.
6. #SB145 ends discrimination against #LGBTQ young people on the sex offender registry. Currently, these youth are forced onto the registry for consensual sex — even if a judge doesn’t think it’s appropriate — in situations where straight youth are not. https://t.co/vjLVet0psI
— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) September 1, 2020
Current California law requires that adults must register as sex offenders if they are convicted of having sex with a minor, though a judge may decide whether to place an adult male not more than 10 years older than the minor on the registry if he has sex with a teenage girl, according to the Chronicle.
In 2015, the California Supreme Court argued that such intercourse can lead to pregnancy and that requiring a father to register as a sex offender may inhibit his ability to find a job and support his child.
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The legislation passed the California Assembly by a bare minimum vote of 41-18 before passing 23-10 in the state Senate, though some lawmakers raised concerns that the bill allows for the mistreatment of minors.
“I cannot in my mind as a mother understand how sex between a 24-year-old and a 14-year-old could ever be consensual, how it could ever not be a registrable offense,” Democratic California state Rep. Lorena Gonzalez said.
“We should never give up on this idea that children should be in no way subject to a predator.”
"SB 145 ends discrimination against #LGBTQ young people on the sex offender registry,” Weiner wrote in a Tuesday tweet.
"Currently, these youth are forced onto the registry for consensual sex — even if a judge doesn’t think it’s appropriate — in situations where straight youth are not.
"This discrimination destroys lives.”
