Let's take a break from wind and roar of the campaign to consider yet another step toward authoritariansim in this once free land.
The Great State of Maine is now considering a piece of legislation that would make it a felony to commit Visual Sexual Aggression against Children.
What constitutes 'Visual Sexual Aggression' is vague, but - like the Supreme Court - the legislators of Maine will know it when they see it.
There are several issues here that strike at the very heart of our constitutional framework, and I invite you to take a momet to ponder the signifigance of vaguley written laws and the politics of 'Child Abuse'.
First, to clear up one point that seems to have gotten ignored in the news story: "Visual Sexual Aggression" is not the same as the age old perversity of 'peeping' on people where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, though the Democratic representative Dawn Hill seems to conflate these two offenses.
Police have long had a number of tools at their disposal for dealing with such invasions of privacy as Ms. Hill seems to be thinking of. Peering in windows, over the top of bathroom stalls, or even stalking children into a public rest room are already clearly illegal activities that police seem able to deal with.
The "agression" singled out in this new law seems to be that there was a "man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms." One can draw all sorts of conclusions about what the man was actually looking at, but none are substantiated in the story. Was he watching youngsters in bikinis going to and from the rest room on the beach? Was he ogling one or several young ladies in particular? We are not told. We are only told that he was commiting 'Visual Sexual Aggression', which is an offense that I am unfamiliar with.
But giving Representative Hill the benefit of the doubt, let's say the man was engaged in watching children on the beach. How would anyone know this? Well, they would watch the watcher, so to speak, and observe him looking at - maybe for an extraordinary length of time - children walking across the beach.
Perverse? Maybe. How do we know it is sexual? Well, either we are reading his mind, as he mentally rehearses some deviat behavior; or he is behaving in overt sexual activity of some sort (including making vulgar remarks or motions).
You see, if is the latter, there are plenty of laws on the books about such behavior. And that's OK, because we know such extreme behavior can disturb the peace of others in a public space.
But if it is the former, and we are reading his mind, we must beg the question of where such mind-reading stops. If I have a flash in my angry mind about hitting someone, will someone read it and lock me up for assault? If I am sitting at my desk and, looking at the program I am writing, think about an attractive co-worker, will that be percieved and result in a rape charge? No, of course there are those who say I'm being rediculous. But you see, once we leave the realm of regulating behavior and start attempting to regulate what people think, well, how does that make us different from the Lenninists of the USSR, the Facists of Germany or the Puritans of New England?
Internal gulags, concentration camps and witch burnings - and other such things - always result when the state begins to read minds. It terminates essential freedom of mind and spirit, and so obviates the possibility of freedom in political, or any other, behavior. And with the possibility of physical and political freedom foreclosed, the republic is at an end.
Of course, I survived the 'Political Correctness' debates in the last century, and I remember well that the measure of behavior was whether it made someone else "uncomfortable". At that time I argued that allowing someone's discomfort to define the wrongdoing of another was robbing people of both freedom and responsibility. The accused is deprived of freedom, because without knowing what specifically will make a passer-by 'uncomfortable', the law becomes capricous and incapable of satisfaction. And allowing everyone to declare others' behavior illegal because it causes their own discomfort robbs us of the responsiblity to deal with the real world in an adult manner.
We must also be aware of two major consequences of introducing legislation aimed at "Visual Sexual Aggression". One, it will be impossible for anyone to vote against it, so its passage is virtually assured. Such are the politics of pubic hysteria.
Secondly, while instigated by some man watching too-young adolescents frolic on a public beach, it will not long remain simply a crime against children. Soon, it will be a crime one can commit against any woman, young or old. And every man will find himself averting his eyes when a femaile, young or old, is near. Of course, this will stifle social and business relationships. But the Arabs have already discovered a solution to that problem. It is called a burqa.
"Live free or die" seems to have morphed into "live in fear' yet again.
Finally, a word about child abuse. It is despicable, and it should be punished severely whenever it is discovered. Yet there has been, for going on twenty years now, a hysteria about child abuse that seems to have engulfed countless innocents in its wide net. The very accusation of being a child abuser becomes the guilty verdict. In those cases where, after years of imprisonment and court battles, people have been determined innocent, they still remain on state 'sexual offender' lists because the law decrees how people are put on, but makes no mechanism for removal if found innocent. In my own state of Georgia, a very large number of those on the sexual predator list ended up there because they were caught in sexual situations with their high school sweetheart / classmate.
People whose crime was to yield to youthful passions with another student must now move when a school bus stop, a church or a day care is placed in their neighborhood. Numerous child care workers have been ruined by accusations that, later proved innocent, yet bankrupted them, stole their freedome and now deny them re-entry into any profession where children might be present.
I fear the real scandal of young children sexually abused by those closest to them has, like a tidal wave, washed all of society into a state where many adults are afraid to work with or be around children lest they be so accused. I know I made a decision years ago to not allow myself to work with or be around children for this very reason, and so I gave up the very fulfilling work of being a volunteer with the Boy Scouts.
Such hysteria is not the mark of a healthy society. But beyond that obvious point, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Perhaps some of you can help me understand this phenomenon better.