I know I’ve been on a jag about sex crimes as of late, which is a departure from the technical and semi-personal nature this blog had when I started it. However, of all the issues that occupy our minds at this moment, I find this one to be especially galling because of the hysteria that surrounds it, and my own determination not to let myself or others I care about get snared in the sex crimes dragnet, especially when we’re not criminals.
Today’s indignity is brought to you by Chuck Goolsbee, who points out this article, from which I quote:
At a Harlan, Kentucky, grocery store last week, perennial gubernatorial candidate Otis “Bullman” Hensley encountered a woman with her two nieces, ages 11 and 13. He offered to trade a “fattening hog” for the girls, a variation on an old Appalachian joke meant as a compliment. The woman evidently didn’t get it. A.P. reports that “the family obtained a warrant for Hensley’s arrest from the local prosecutor, claiming the comment was intended to entice the children into illegal sexual activity.”
Huh? I have read this a dozen times and for the life of me, I cannot figure out how trading a fat hog for your kids is sexually perverse. Maybe not funny, maybe not exactly a compliment, maybe not what you want to hear, and certainly not sexual.
“In Kentucky, … citizens can obtain arrest warrants simply by filing a complaint with local prosecutors,” and ”no investigation is necessary for police to make an arrest when the charge involves an alleged sexual offense.”
Yep. No criminal investigation necessary, no explicit sexual comment necessary. All you have to do is say something that someone insane interprets as sexual, independent of whether it actually is sexual, have them complain, and you’re charged with a sex crime. Charged is different than convicted, but it is still a gross perversion of justice and only serves to prevent legitimate speech without substantively preventing sex crimes.
Had enough yet?
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August 28th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
All I can think of is the restaurant scene in The Blues Brothers:
“How much for the little one? Your girls, I want to buy them. Sell them to me. Sell me your childrens.”
Only if you assume the worst of everyone around you could that possibly make sense.
In all seriousness, though, I don’t suppose Kentucky has a charge of ‘Being a fscking Moron in the 1st Degree.’
Here we have the union of the twin causes of sex-craziness and the demise of satire. I have blogged about this myself in the past. There are, quite simply, too many people with more sensitivity than brains. If I were this guy, I’d tell my lawyer not to stop until I owned the county government, as well as everything this woman owns.
I just pray that with my new baby daughter that I will be able to tell the difference between a lovable goofball and a real threat.
As far as my daughter goes, my wife is insisting that by the time she’s old enough that I’m taking her places, that I carry around a copy of her birth certificate. She has nightmares about me having to take her into a bathroom and some nimrod thinking I’m a pervert and calling security. I’m already looking around at various places and noticing which ones have changing tables in the ladies’ room only and which have them in the men’s room or in a separate room.
As I watch her sleeping in the corner, I think of the one thing I am determined to battle the world to secure for her - a childhood.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Thanks, Obi, for posting that link to your blog and for being a constant commenter
You and I seem to agree about quite a number of things.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Yea, Harlan KY… My grandmother and both her sisters were born there, a good chunk of my family grew up there, and I’ve been there, many times. Even not having grown up there, even *I* know what a damn fattening hog is and I know that there’s nothing sexual about it! Obviously this crazed zealot and (I’m willing to bet) uber-religious woman hasn’t lived there long enough to realize when someone is telling you “your girls are very pretty” as opposed to “I wanna rape your daughters and then make an altar out of their empty skulls.” Dumb cow.
August 30th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
To city folk and suburbanites making a grown man squeal like pig is not normal, but in the land of “Deliverance” it is quite accepted.
Proof that people are different everywhere.