Soliciting minors should be a felony – San Bernardino Sun

Why are California’s Democratic lawmakers so ambivalent about protecting 16- and 17-year-olds from sex trafficking?

It is the strangest hill to die on, but so many in Sacramento are adamant that this is a tough question, one requiring much pondering.

This week, Assemblymember Nick Schultz, the Burbank Democrat who chairs the Assembly Public Safety Committee, forced a colleague to strip language out of her bill, AB 379, which would make it an automatic felony to purchase sex from a 16- or 17-year-old, closing a loophole in existing law.

“We’re not saying no,” Schultz told KCRA in Sacramento. “But what we’re saying is if we’re going to be thoughtful policy makers, we really need to dive deep into this issue.”

This doesn’t really seem like an issue that requires a deep dive. Purchasing sex from a minor 15 years old and under is already a felony. Is it that hard to see the wisdom of extending that protection to all minors?In fact, this is only even an issue because last year three Senate Democrats made it an issue by demanding 16- and 17-year-olds be stripped from a bill making an automatic felony for victims 15 years old and younger.

What is it about 16- and 17-year-olds? After watching the Legislature this week I still can’t figure it out. When the bill came up in Schultz’s committee, I expected to find some coherent policy argument explaining the carveout. It didn’t happen.

Some argued young adult lovers might get inadvertently swept up by this law. This is a quaint sentiment but only true if there’s an exchange of money for sex in what is a bizarre vision of puppy love.

Schultz argued in committee and a subsequent floor debate that there are plenty of laws on the books that address sex with a minor. But this too avoided the fixation on exempting 16- and 17-year-olds in this particular instance.

In committee Schultz moved the bill forward with the carve out intact and punted the debate over protecting older minors to the fall.

And then came the floor debate.

Assembly Republicans tried bringing the issue up on the floor, prompting a bitter debate. San Diego Republican Carl DeMaio, who happens to be gay, decried the opposition from LGBT activist groups that have deemed similar legislation anti-LGBT.

“It’s offensive to use the gay community as window dressing for sex trafficking,” DeMaio said.

Los Angeles Democrat Mark Gonzalez, who also happens to be gay, essentially told DeMaio he wasn’t gay enough and said DeMaio wasn’t supporting “civil rights for gay people.”

“Don’t pretend to be who you intend to be,” Gonzalez said, overlooking the fact that DeMaio is happily married to another man.

Gonzalez had another embarrassing moment earlier in committee when he criticized the bill’s original author, Sacramento Democrat Maggy Krell, for not working with LBGT activists in crafting the bill, only to look absurd when she gave an exhaustive list of meetings she held with such activists, including Gonzalez.

I write that Krell, a former prosecutor who specialized in fighting human trafficking, was the “original author” because Democrats stripped her name from the bill before the floor vote in retaliation for her support for the Republican drill. This was as Democrats protested they were above “playing politics.”

Indeed.