California Legislature Passes Bill That Will Soften Penalty For LGBT Adults Who Have Sex With Underage Teens

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Th> e bill — SB 145 — was introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), an openly gay man, and seeks to prevent gay adults who *************l sex with underage teenagers from being automatically assigned to California’s sex offender registry.
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The legislation calls for a judge to use discretion on assigning an individual to the sex offender registry if their victim was between the ages of 14 to 17 and the age difference between the offender and the victim is less than 10 years.
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The bill passed the California state Senate by a 23-10 vote and passed the Assembly by a 41-18 vote, the San Fransisco Chronicle reported.
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Considering it it California, I am not surprised .
 
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gam197 said:
The legislation calls for a judge to use discretion on assigning an individual to the sex offender registry if their victim was between the ages of 14 to 17 and the age difference between the offender and the victim is less than 10 years.
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Prior to this bill, that was the discretion that a judge had when people were of the opposite sex. If they were of the same sex, then the judge was granted no discretion.

With this bill, the same discretion is applied for consensual sex irrespective of the sex of the people involved. There’s more nuance that could be pointed out. But I would not be comfortable discussing that in detail here on CAF, which is generally a family friendly site.
 
ThinkingSapien said:
Prior to this bill, that was the discretion that a judge had when people were of the opposite sex. If they were of the same sex, then the judge was granted no discretion.

With this bill, the same discretion is applied for consensual sex irrespective of the sex of the people involved. There’s more nuance that could be pointed out. But I would not be comfortable discussing that in detail here on CAF, which is generally a family friendly site.
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Thank you for the nuance/context. I was at first shocked by the news in the first post. Thought they are carving out a loophole for LGBTQ, not treating all adult offenders the same, which your post appears to imply.

I personally think it should be less than ten years difference. I think an 18 year old sleeping with a 16 year old is not much different from a 16 year old with a 14 year old. But a 24 year old man or woman knowingly sleeping with a 14 year old girl or boy in this century seems much more clearly wrong to me, i.e., something the 24 year old should already suspect of his/her own accord would be far from “ok.”

PS: I do wonder if part of the reason it was so easy for women to be subjugated in marriages in the past isn’t that it was so common for very young girls to be married off to fully adult men in so many cultures. Engendered, it must’ve, a pseudo parent/child relationship (where it was loving), or authoritarian/victim relationship (where it was unloving) with the girl almost always in the child/victim position. Something like a 30 year old man marrying a 14/15 year old girl was very common.
 
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I can’t help but feel that the linked article is deliberately misrepresenting things. What this legislation means in reality is concealed in the bit they quote, but they don’t acknowledge it.
 
Rubee said:
Thank you for the nuance/context.
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Call me biased, but when a thread is started with a Breitbart story, I expect such relevant nuance to be missing.
Rubee said:
I personally think it should be less than ten years difference. I think an 18 year old sleeping with a 16 year old is not much different from a 16 year old with a 14 year old. But a 24 year old man or woman knowingly sleeping with a 14 year old girl or boy in this century seems much more clearly wrong to me, i.e., something the 24 year old should already suspect of his/her own accord would be far from “ok.”
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I agree. When someone looks at the laws on this, in general, they are kind of surprising. At the federal level the age if 12 is the youngest allowed age for some types of activities. States add restrictions on top of this. In my state (Georgia) the decisions on some of the pre-18 restrictions are up to the parents of which ever person is younger if the parties are within a few years of each other.

The variations are something that I think are not well k own. But it is also something I would not suggest anyone look up on the internet as the relevant search queries themselves would just look very suspicious.
 
ThinkingSapien said:
The variations are something that I think are not well k own. But it is also something I would not suggest anyone look up on the internet as the relevant search queries themselves would just look very suspicious.
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Searching does look suspicious. But I think parents should at least know the law in their own state and maybe where they travel to as well.
 
It will get worse. The Dem party owes these people and they’ll get paid with things like this, and worse.
 
I’m not sure if I approve of allowing discretion whether the duo was same or opposite sex.

On the face of it, though, the current law is discriminatory.
 
Ridgerunner said:
It will get worse. The Dem party owes these people and they’ll get paid with things like this, and worse.
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Do you believe there should be a different legal standard for same sex vs. opposite sex relationships?
 
I do not believe sex with minors by adults should ever be permissible.
 
Well I agree with that but there shouldn’t be a different standard and legal punishment based on the orientation of the offender.
 
I do not believe sex with minors by adults should ever be permissible.
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Who does? That statement is barely relevant to the issue that is the topic of this thread.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
Who does? That statement is barely relevant to the issue that is the topic of this thread.
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Let’s put it this way, then. I do believe all who have sex with minors (other than minors themselves) should go on the registry. Is that what you wanted?
 
It’s consistent and not discriminatory. It obviously isn’t really fair to put an 18 year old on the sex offender registry for sleeping with a 17 year old, though.
 
Ridgerunner said:
I do not believe sex with minors by adults should ever be permissible.
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Imagine an 18 year old who has consensual sex with their 17 year old girlfriend. These people are peers. One is a senior in high school, one is a junior.

That 18 year old does not belong in a registry with child molestors.
 
I guess it’s a matter of whether the legislature itself wants that discretion or whether to entrust it to a judge.
 
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