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

Alan Dershowitz Cited Ethnicity to Defend His Opposition to Statutory Rape Laws

 

This opinion-editorial was written by Alan M. Dershowitz,

and published by the Los Angeles Times, in 1997.

     Dershowitz served as convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's attorney at least twice before Epstein's reported death in 2019. Epstein's main accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, claims that Alan Dershowitz flew on Epstein's plane "The Lolita Express" and had sex with minors.

     Dershowitz, who is married, maintains that he never took his pants off, and merely got a massage from an old Russian woman. Dershowitz maintains that he never had sex with any children, despite the fact that he has publicly gone on record as being against statutory rape laws.

     In the op-ed, Dershowitz says that he supports prohibitions on sex with very young children. After the op-ed was published, Dershowitz explained that he was making a constitutional argument, not a moral argument.

     However, that does not mean he is morally opposed to having sex with teenagers. In the article, he focuses on teenagers having sex with each other; probably to distract the reader from the fact that eliminating statutory rape laws, or lowering the legal age of consent, would result in adults having sex with teenagers.

     The one thing that Dershowitz and I agree on is that morality certainly doesn't enter into his argument. There are certainly arguments which can be made about statutory rape laws, which are both moral and constitutional. Dershowitz's argument is not one of them. It is odd for Dershowitz to claim that his argument is a constitutional one, when he doesn't even mention the Constitution a single time in the article.

     In my opinion, Dershowitz's goal, with this op-ed, is to use the "constitutional" (or legal) argument which could be made in favor of loosening or eliminating statutory rape laws, as a sort of Trojan Horse. His goal is to cloak the defense of teenagers having sex before they are old enough to consent, in a legal argument, and frame it as a constitutional argument.

     It is important to notice that the very title of the article is "Statutory Rape Is an Outdated Concept". If he were questioning the concept of statutory rape only in a legal sense but not in an ethical sense, then he would have titled the article "Statutory Rape Laws Are Flawed" or something to that effect. He is clearly questioning both the legal and ethical bases for statutory rape laws.
     Dershowitz writes that "It is obvious that there must be criminal sanctions against sex with very young children, but it is doubtful whether such sanctions should apply to teenagers above the age of puberty, since voluntary sex is so common in their age group." Dershowitz shows with this sentence that he is either unaware of the idea that teenagers are not old enough nor mature enough to consent to sex, or else he is simply opposed to the idea and wishes to give it no recognition in his article.

     Nothing in this op-ed suggests that Dershowitz is opposed to adults having sex with teenagers. He doesn't even mention it. It's as if he thinks he has no responsibility to, or that adults having sex with teenagers has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. It absolutely does.

     Even more shameful in all of this, is the fact that Dershowitz cited the fact that "puberty is apparently arriving earlier, particularly among certain ethnic groups". I do not know what Dershowitz is referring to, but an article published by WebMD in 2002 confirmed that African-American girls begin puberty before white girls. However, they only begin puberty an average of six months earlier. That is not even a full year, and thus is hardly a justification for lowering the age of consent.

     That article can be viewed here: http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20021009/girls-menstruating-earlier#:~:text=While%20the%20average%20age%20of,months%20earlier%20than%20white%20girls.

     Considering this small difference, consider what it could mean that Dershowitz is citing ethnicity to justify eliminating statutory rape laws. The argument that "some ethnicities, like African-Americans, 'mature' earlier", is not very different from, and aligns perfectly with the way of thinking that informs the "black girls like wild sex" stereotype. Some African-American women have been exposed to violent sex, and heard their aggressors make the excuse that they had heard that black women liked wild sex. This stereotype is fed by the old idea that Africans are "wild", which is based on the idea that they're sub-human, and basically animals, and need to be controlled. The idea that black girls "mature earlier" is thus a medical fact, but not a noteworthy one considering the probability that the fact is only cited to justify raping African-American teenagers. It also potentially implies that black people immature, an idea which could be used to justify controlling them. And rape is a form of control.

     "If there's fluff on the muff, she's old enough" is not a medical saying. Nor is it a legal saying.

     If getting your period makes you a woman, and that makes it OK to have sex, then by that logic it's OK to have sex with young girls if they experience precocious puberty. Twelve and thirteen years old are not the youngest ages at which a female has experienced menarche (first menstruation). That age is four.

     There should not be a purely biological standard regarding when losing one's virginity is appropriate. Nor should that standard be dictated by "maturity", nor ability to earn money and have a career. There are plenty of talented children, child stars, and children capable of performing labor or investing in stocks. That does not make it OK for adults, or other children or teenagers, to have sex with them. That does not make it OK to marry children. Child molesters will tell teenagers and children that they are mature all day; they do this in order to justify treating them like adults.

     Age must be the standard; not biology, nor race, nor puberty, nor maturity, nor financial independence, nor work capability. If being at a "lowered capacity to consent" makes it OK for two drunk adults to have sex, then the same logic could be used to justify a retarded old man having sex with a little girl. Or getting drunk in order to be "on the same level as" a sober teenager.

     Age must be the standard. We must maintain the purpose of statutory rape laws, which is to place the obligation to prove the younger person's age, upon the older person, if and when there is any question about whether it was legal for the people in question to have sex, given their possible ages.

     We must maintain statutory rape laws and age of consent laws, and improve upon them, to prevent the federal government from unnecessarily and unconstitutionally intervening in child trafficking laws in a manner which causes the lower federal age of consent to trump the state's higher age of consent. (Note: You can learn more about this topic by researching the case of Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions.)
     Laws against trafficking children out of state for sex, are useless, as long as the federal government has an age of consent of twelve, with a defense written into the law that basically instructs child molesters to argue that they reasonably thought that the victim was at least 16 years old.

     This country's child sexual abuse laws are a complete mess, and Dershowitz's arguments only help the types of attorneys and other people in the legal professions who would be in the position to read this article. Dershowitz's "op-ed" thus amounts to little more than advice to child molesters and wannabe child rapists - especially those in or connected to the legal professions - who want to use these twisted arguments, and the "black girls mature earlier" argument, to justify having sex with minors which is both illegal and wrong.

     I appreciate the fact that Alan Dershowitz defended Julian Assange on rape charges. I also appreciate that Assange's victim was represented and was able to file charges. Everyone has the right to a defense. But we should be concerned that Dershowitz is leveraging his reputation as the nation's best defender of the "duty of adequate representation" (the duty to adequately represent your client) in order to justify his continued defense of accused child rapists and Israeli spies.

     When you see a Jewish lawyer defend Israeli spy, after Israeli spy, accused of child sex trafficking after Israeli spy after rapist, and see him defend eliminating statutory rape laws in an article in the paper, maybe it's time to wonder whether he's a pedophile. The fact that Epstein's main accuser, Virginia Giuffre, alleges he's a pedophile, ought to suggest that anyone connected to Dershowitz, or anyone who's been following him since 1997, might have been watching him for advice on how to abuse children and get away with it.

     They can certainly go to the U.S. Code section on child sex crimes for similar advice.

Written and published on January 31st, 2021

Edited and Expanded on February 6th, 2021