“TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS” EDITION
Being trans or gay does not make someone a groomer. Grooming is a BEHAVIOR and is not inherently tied to sexual or gender identity. Anti-queer sentiment and legislation has NEVER actually been about protecting children – it’s about defining a rigid list of identities that are acceptable. It was not about protecting children when the Nazis persecuted gay and trans people, and it is not now. Yes, I will make that comparison, and, yes, it is absolutely applicable.
In the 1930’s, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was a primary target of Nazi aggression for providing the first scientific basis for theories on gender, sexuality and bodily autonomy as it related thereunto. Fascism cannot abide the dissolution of strict categories for human relationships, and as such these identities were viewed as a threat to the social order. They banned and burned books on these topics, just as even now libraries are attacked and closed in these United States for the crime of HAVING books on these topics.
Bodily autonomy is irrelevant to a state that imagines that it owns your body and has an entitlement to the children it will expect you to produce to replenish its workforce. If you do not own your body and identity – be it through a right to reproductive liberty, the freedom to define your name and mode of reference, or the right to make informed medical decisions – you are *manifestly* not free.
Alex Jones – an absolute clown who shrieks about demon-possessed groomers running child brothels out of the non-existent basements of Washington DC pizzerias – had child pornography on his phone and non-consensually shared intimate images of his wife with friends, because *of course he did*. The accusations are frequently self-reports. The actual monsters will always paint their enemies as everything they themselves are without a hint of evidence, then deny clear evidence of their own malfeasance.
And so, the actual groomers – the people who strategically normalize inappropriate sexual behavior with children – use it as a smoke screen to direct attention away from themselves, often while engaging in their vile craft in plain sight. Efforts that will actaully hold them accountable are quietly shelved to avoid the awkwardness of arguing against the passage of such common sense legislation.
Here in my home state, MI HB 5767 is about permitting a history of grooming to be entered into court as evidence, and is currently being blocked by the same people accusing trans and gay people – including my gay and trans *friends*, *family*, and *colleagues* – of being groomers based solely on who they are. The presumed reason they are blocking this legislation is that former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield is currently under investigation for statutory rape in relation to a girl he groomed. This law has the potential to immediately be applicable to the case and, if it were, would be so applicable without the risk of being ruled post facto prosecution.
To clarify, it is not in question that he groomed the girl (NOW a woman), but it is in question whether he engaged in sexual behavior with her prior to her reaching the age of consent. If this bill were already law, or if it goes into law prior to this case being tried, his prior conduct could be entered into evidence in support of the argument that he normalized the inappropriate sexual relationship prior to it being legal, even if he claims to have waited until it was legal to act on it. This could be used to build evidence against him. His colleagues don’t want that.
The law is extremely simple – it merely states that past behavior would be admissible in court as evidence establishing that a defendant had worked to normalize unwanted sexual advances or contact using their position of trust and authority (which can include relative age). Here is the text of the bill:
www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(n52xugqcfltymmyt2lztkqkp))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname=2022-HB-5767
Read it. It takes 5 minutes if you don’t skip the boring procedural bits, or about 30 seconds if you read only the material portion.
Note that it doesn’t establish a new category of offense or some novel legal theory – it only permits a specific category of reprehensible behavior to be entered into evidence to establish an element of the charge related thereunto (lack of consent) due to systematic normalization. I cannot fathom a good faith argument as to why this legislation should not pass that doesn’t require the implicit suggestion that grooming is somehow acceptable. Which it is not – this is a point on which I will not negotiate.
To repeat – this doesn’t even make the behavior illegal yet. No one can be “accused of grooming” under this law unless they are actaully charged with a crime under existing statutes, and it even limits the scope of the statutes to which this legislation may be applied. Could it be more robust? I surely think so. Is the criminalization of grooming itself – which isn’t actually grooming if you don’t sexually exploit or plan to so exploit the victim – warranted? I certainly believe so. Ultimately, we don’t even need to have those potentially complicated conversations right now – we can simply pass legislation that legally defines grooming and allows for its discussion in appropriate court settings. This law doesn’t cost anything. This law doesn’t change the character of the penal code significantly. This law doesn’t do anything but allow juries to hear about someone’s behavior as it relates to the matter at hand.
This state of affairs in shameful. HB 5767 is a good and necessary law supported by common sense that should have already been in place. People in positions of power – and adults generally – must not be permitted to use their authority to groom children into sexual relationships with confidence that their behavior will not be discussed in court. If anti gay / trans panic actaully had something -ANYTHING – to do with concerns about grooming children, this law would be lauded as an opportunity to hold them accountable and pushed through by a voice vote instead of blocked from discussion. It is not, because homophobia and transphobia and the increasingly persistent blanket accusations of grooming aren’t about actual sexual grooming of children – the accusations of grooming against gay and trans people are intended to justify and incite extrajudicial violence and future legislative criminalization of their self-determination and consensual adult relationships.
Grooming is a threat to children. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell both engaged in grooming as part of their criminal enterprise. Like most groomers, they were affluent charismatic white heterosexual cis people, which is precisely the reason that this legislation is being delayed and blocked. The statistics simply do not reflect the accusations.
If you think trans people are a bigger threat to children than ACTUAL groomers – the Matt Gaetzes, Roy Moores, Jeffrey Epsteins and Lee Chatfields of the world – fix your heart.
