Don't Shoot the Messenger: Confirming Robby Soave's Observation That it's Legal to Traffic Sixteen- and Seventeen-Year-Olds

     As comedian -turned- political commentator and podcast host Jimmy Dore has been remarking more and more often lately, "our country is full of the adult children of alcoholics, and the adult children of alcoholics tend to blame the person making them aware of a problem, instead of blaming the person who's the actual cause of the problem".

     Dore's comment seems to very accurately describe social media's reaction to Robby Soave's Twitter comments about the Matt Gaetz teenager-trafficking scandal.

     On April 1st, 2021, the New York Times and other sources reported that Matt Gaetz, a Republican U.S. congressman from Florida, is being investigated by the Justice Department for possibly trafficking a 17-year-old girl across state lines for the purposes of sex.

     Within a day or two of the Gaetz controversy breaking, Robby Soave, a writer and senior editor at the libertarian-leaning Reason magazine, tweeted in response to the scandal. His tweet read, "I really don't think Matt Gaetz committed [']sex trafficking['] even if he is guilty of exactly what the NYT describes. And in fact, the age of consent is 16 or 17 in the vast majority of states." A subsequent tweet of Soave's read, "Yes I am in fact a libertarian thank you for pointing that out".

     Soave's Twitter comments on the Gaetz scandal may seem insensitive, and it might seem like an obvious defense of trafficking teens for sex (and maybe even of pedophilia in general). Or maybe Soave is just "playing Devil's Advocate".

     But on the other hand, when Soave says "I really don't think Matt Gaetz committed [']sex trafficking['] even if he is guilty of exactly what the NYT describes", he might just mean that he personally thinks there is no merit to the reports about Gaetz.

     Still, it may seem insensitive that Soave would say that he doesn't think Gaetz is guilty "even if he is guilty of exactly what the NYT describes". It almost sounds like he's saying Gaetz is guilty and not guilty at the same time, which doesn't make sense.

     But in fact, what Robby Soave is saying about the law is 100% correct. Unfortunately, in the United States, it is currently legal to traffic teenagers across state lines, provided that they are sixteen years of age or older. This was the outcome of the 2017 U.S. Supreme Court case Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions.

     Thus, Robby Soave may appear to be defending pedophilia and child trafficking, but we cannot conclude, solely from these two tweets, whether he is doing so because of his own personal "ethics" (or lack thereof), or whether he is doing so in order to be on the correct side of the law.
     If it's the latter, then it is sad to consider what this means. In order to be on the correct side of the law, as it stands right now, we have to agree that trafficking sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds across state lines for the purposes of sex, is not a crime against anybody, in the eyes of federal law.
     The law is giving the American people (and especially the politicians and lawyers, and those who wish to become politically involved and taken seriously) no choice but to subjugate their own personal senses of morality regarding child protection, to that of the state. This will not do.

     I found Robby Soave's tweet in a Facebook group called "Communists v. Libertarians Debate Group". Soave's tweet was posted mockingly, by a member of that group.

     Shortly after the Matt Gaetz scandal broke, and Robby Soave made his comment on Twitter, I messaged the member who posted Soave's tweet, with the following message.

 

 

     Hey. Saw your post on Communists v. Libertarians about age of consent laws. Soave might have said what he said out of a desire to lower the age of consent, but he's factually correct.

     The case of Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions was a federal case that effectively lowered the age of consent in about 20 states, including Florida. This federal case effectively nullified the age of consent laws in those states.

     All federal sex trafficking is under federal jurisdiction, and therefore the states can't prosecute a guy who rapes a 17-year-old as long as he takes her out of state in the process. It's a fucked up situation.

     Unfortunately for some people's narrative, the Huffington Post and Jeff Sessions were on the right side of the issue. HuffPo for reporting the case ("Supreme Court unanimously overturns age of consent laws in 20 states") and Jeff Sessions for trying to prosecute Esquivel-Quintana, who traveled across state lines with a 17-year-old girl.

     I believe the girl was from California, it was some state where there was a 17 or 18 year age of consent. The Supreme Court found in Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions that the federal government's "generic federal age of consent" of 16, won out over the states' higher age of consent laws.

     I believe that we either need to let states prosecute traffickers who take minors from their states, or else we need a constitutional amendment setting the age of consent to 17 or 18 nationwide (because varying age of consent laws in each state will inevitably lead to movement of children for illicit purposes).

 

     Many critics of libertarians - and the critics of the Constitution - like to argue that the Constitution is a living document, and that therefore it should not be interpreted too rigidly or literally.

     But it's hard not to interpret the Constitution rigidly or literally, when the U.S. Code rigidly defines all of the legal terms used in constitutional and legal language.

     To say that we interpret the Constitution "too literally", is to admit that we are interpreting it accurately, without saying it out loud.

     The critics of those who interpret the Constitution accurately, and of those of us who read the law and accurately observe from it that teenagers may legally be trafficked across state lines in some circumstances, are thus in denial.

     I would advise that people on the left who want to protect children, should stop criticizing people for noticing the state of the law. Just like the first step of recovering from alcoholism is admitting that you have a problem - and just like Lao Tzu said you must understand your enemy in order to defeat him - it is impossible to change or improve the law, unless we first recognize and admit how bad it is.

     Libertarians do not consider it fun to have to point out hard truths about the sorry state of our government, like that trafficking teenagers is legal, and that it's legal to marry babies in ten states. But we still consider it our responsibility to inform the public about bad laws, despite the fact that, in payment for this, we have only been treated like the people who caused the problem, instead of being treated as the whistleblowers we are. [My video of Joe Biden pinching an 8-year-old girl's nipple live on C-SPAN, for instance, was removed from YouTube for "cyber-bullying and harassment".]
     To reiterate what C. Frederic Bastiat said about the critics of liberty: Our critics act as if our not wanting the state to raise grain, means that we don't want anyone to raise grain; that is hardly the case. What is good for the law is not always good for the people. Similarly, the set of behaviors that are criminally punishable don't always line up with what we morally believe should be the set of behaviors that are punishable. That is why we are having this conversation; because we want the law to line up with morality.

     So don't shoot the messenger. Blame the people who are actually responsible for twenty state age of consent laws going down in one fell swoop. Blame the attorneys who represented Mr. Esquivel-Quintana. If necessary, blame the political parties with whom those attorneys are associated. Hell, blame the people who wrote the federal age of consent law, and the definition of sex trafficking of a minor or ward.

     But don't blame Robby Soave; his comments were necessary.

     The acceptable legal defense for having sexual relations with a minor, is written into the law. Until we recognize that the age of consent is too low, and we raise it and make it uniform across the states, then the current federal law on trafficking minors will serve only as an instruction to traffickers about how to get away with their crimes.
     Until sex trafficking laws are reformed, the rights of children aged sixteen and seventeen, to be free from harm, will be at risk, and those who point out this problem will continue to be mocked into silence. And the federal law on trafficking a minor or ward will be right there, to make excuses for the situation.
     We have to make it illegal to traffic 17-year-olds across state lines, if we want sex traffickers - and people like Matt Gaetz (if he is guilty) - to be prosecuted. Expecting them to be prosecuted, when what they're doing is not yet illegal (and also no longer illegal, since 2017), is irrational.

     Noticing that sex-trafficking older teens is not illegal, is not necessarily a moral endorsement of the practice; it could also be a warning. Noticing that something is not illegal, is not necessarily the same thing as saying it's good that it's not illegal. You can't know for sure what a person means by something they said, unless you read their full statement, and understand the context in which it's being said.

Read more about this topic at the following links:

Matt Gaetz scandal:
http://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/matt-gaetz-justice-department/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/us/politics/matt-gaetz-sex-trafficking-investigation.html

Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions:
http://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-unanimously-overrules-statutory-rape_b_592edaede4b017b267edff12

My most recent article about the need to reform laws on age of consent, statutory rape, and sex trafficking:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/03/before-fully-legalizing-sex-work-stop.html

Written on April 1st and April 3rd, 2021

Published on April 3rd, 2021

Expanded on April 6th, 2021