Vote No on "Sex Dragnet" Prop 83!

California Ballot

The following leaflet was issued by the Bay Area Spartacist League on November 5.

On the ballot this November 7 is Proposition 83, “Jessica’s Law” (named for a Florida girl who was raped and murdered in February 2005, allegedly by a released sex offender), a draconian measure ratcheting up yet again the government dragnet against “sex offenders.” Publicized under the politically charged name of “Campaign for Child Safety,” this proposed law has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with legitimizing and augmenting the powers of the bourgeois state, as part of the massive assault on democratic rights and civil liberties in the “war on terrorism.” Such measures, putatively aimed at “sex crimes” (as defined by the morality code of this racist, anti-woman, anti-gay bourgeois society), can be used to build the legal justification and climate of hysteria for attacks against the left, militant workers, immigrants, minorities—anyone deemed “deviant” by the capitalist rulers.

If passed, Prop. 83 would impose lifelong GPS (Global Positioning System) monitoring on “sex offenders” (a kind of 21st-century branding); further deny or restrict probation and parole; and increase the ban on their living near a school or park, thus rendering most urban areas off limits. One conviction on any “sex offense” could lead to a lifelong electronic jail sentence and lifetime registry on the state “sex offenders” list. The law makes possession of one piece of child pornography liable to felony prosecution.

Like most states, California has reams of “sex crimes” legislation, much of it the product of years of witchhunting that has tried to demonize sexuality by grossly conflating vicious serial rape and murder with wholly consensual acts. But even the already stringent laws are not enough for this bipartisan “family values” crusade. On September 20 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law SB1128, originated in the state legislature by Democratic Senator Elaine Alquist, which toughens the original “sex predator” law, “Megan’s Law,” in effect since 1996. The law passed the state legislature unanimously.

The national hysteria over “sex offenders” has grown to such an extent that in at least six states officials slapped down curfews, surveillance and other punitive measures against them for Halloween. These Kafkaesque acts followed the weeklong Operation Falcon III, a U.S. Marshals Services roundup of 10,733 fugitives, including 971 “sex offenders” who had failed to register with their communities. Under the 2006 Adam Walsh Act, this is now a federal offense. “Sex predator” laws are a call for vigilante terror, as in the case of 24-year-old William Elliott in Maine, murdered by a vigilante after he spent time in jail for having a sexual relationship with his girlfriend when she was just days shy of 16 (Maine’s age of consent). Such murders can be laid squarely at the feet of the bourgeoisie’s anti-sex bigots.

Prop. 83 is so sweeping and arbitrary that even capitalist newspapers like the Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News, and San Francisco Chronicle call for its defeat, as do San Francisco Democrat Mark Leno, the San Francisco Labor Council, and the capitalist Green Party. Of course, most opposition rests solidly on support to the principle of persecution for “sex crimes,” while eschewing this particular piece of legislation as “ineffective” or “too expensive.”

Government Out of the Bedroom!

The Spartacist League calls for a “no” vote on Prop. 83 because it increases the powers of the bourgeois state and its cops and courts, including the sentencing of “sex offenders” to indefinite involuntary confinement, a stark violation of the U.S. Constitution, and because we oppose the criminalization of consensual sex. As Marxists we seek to build a revolutionary party as “the tribune of the people,…able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects,” in the words of V.I. Lenin (What Is To Be Done? [1902]). We have spoken out in opposition to Prop. 83, including at the October 21 Partisan Defense Committee rally to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and on college campuses.

Prop. 83’s actual target is youth, especially gay youth, already subject to harassment and worse. In California, as in many states, the age of consent is a ridiculous 18, making sex with or even “touching” anyone 17 or under a crime. As the Bay Area Reporter quoted gay activist Howard Wallace, “Lewd conduct is often charged after high-profile ‘bathroom busts’ in public parks, many of which are police stings that result in false arrests and convictions.” Down with the reactionary “age of consent” laws!

And the ostensible left—what do they say? You’d think it would be a no-brainer. How can any group claiming to stand for socialism or any kind of human liberation not oppose this manifestly oppressive measure? We looked, but not a word of opposition could be found in the programs of two ostensible leftist candidates running for U.S. Senator from California. Green Party candidate Todd Chretien, a supporter of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), does not mention Prop. 83 on his Web site (www.todd4senate.org) or in any of the campaign material that we have seen, even though the Green Party itself has called for a “no” vote to Prop. 83. Socialist Action (SA) candidate Jeff Mackler is similarly mum on this barbaric proposition, despite his call to “repeal the Patriot Act, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and all other legislation restricting democratic rights and civil liberties.” Both Mackler and Chretien are running against the longtime incumbent, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gung-ho supporter of anti-sex witchhunt legislation, but neither one has spoken up on what should be an elementary question for any so-called socialist.

SA’s silence is in line with their program of seeking reform, not revolution, through pressuring the capitalists to adopt “progressive” policies. Far from acting as a “tribune of the people,” with its silence this group capitulates to bourgeois morality and gross police interference in private life. Nevertheless, Mackler’s program demands, “To the reformist credo, ‘Anybody But Bush,’ we answer, ‘No to the twin parties of war and oppression!’ And ‘Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people’” (undated SA campaign supplement). Importantly, Mackler is running explicitly against the capitalist Greens. Because of this crude class line, the Spartacist League has extended critical support to Mackler in the election as a measure to advance the consciousness of the proletariat that it must organize independently of all capitalist parties.

For its part, the ISO is gloating over the disgrace of Republican Congressman Mark Foley in the seemingly endless scandal over his approaches to congressional aides in their late teens. In this they join the Democrats, hoping the fall of this reactionary Congressman with a long record of attacks on the rights of gays will motivate much of the Republicans’ evangelical Christian base to stay home on election day. The ISO terms Foley’s act “a criminal outrage” (“Which Side Are You On? The Democrats’ Pathetic Display,” Socialist Worker, 6 October). Says the ISO, pushing all the same buttons for social hysteria and bigotry, “After all, what sane person doesn’t oppose pedophilia?” By supporting the state’s right to legislate morality, they also support this decaying social order that produces genuinely horrific crimes against women and children. The ISO willfully conflates consensual sexual activities with vicious abuse. Their embrace of bourgeois “morality” reflects a fundamental loyalty to the current social order.

As Marxists, we oppose the efforts of the state to regulate the manifold expressions of human sexuality. We oppose the persecution of anyone who engages in consensual intergenerational sex. The only guideline that should exist is that of effective consent, regardless of age, gender or sexual preference. We oppose all laws against “crimes without victims” such as prostitution, drug use or pornography. We oppose the persecution of Mark Foley on the basis of his sex life, as well as the entire “pedophilia” hysteria. Thus we have defended against state persecution the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), an organization that defends the right of men and boys to engage in consensual sex.

The witchhunters want to equate looking at pornography with violent crimes such as rape, sexual assault and even murder, singling out child pornography as especially pernicious. Like all pornography, it is simply words and images designed for pleasure. But the U.S. imperialists—whose bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq included the acts of sadistic torture and sexual violence carried out on prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo—would like you to forget Abu Ghraib, and put “child pornographers” away for life.

Democratic Rights Are Indivisible

The “sex predator” hysteria is of a piece with the vicious persecution of gays and the wholesale assault on women’s basic right to abortion. This November’s California ballot includes the anti-abortion “squeal rule” Proposition 85, which would impose parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period on women under 18 before an abortion. Supporters of Prop. 85 appeal to the “sex predators” hysteria with statements like that from spokesman Albin Rhomberg, who said that minors “need to be protected from their immaturity and vulnerability.... These girls who think these sexual predators on the Internet are Prince Charming” (Los Angeles Times, 17 October). Their statement in the official California voter information guide says that “these pregnancies are evidence of statutory rape and sexual abuse.” No on Prop. 85! For free abortion on demand!

In this capitalist society all repressive measures come down hardest on blacks, gays, women, immigrants—all those deemed outside the bourgeois “mainstream.” Under “Jessica’s Law,” what will lie in store for blacks, who already make up a portion of the prison population vastly out of line with their numbers in the population as a whole? Look at the case of Cary Verse, a black man, who was released from prison in 2004 after having served his full sentence for rape. Barbarically, he was chemically castrated before his release. “Megan’s Law” vigilante terror hounded him through three counties before a Catholic priest in Oakland, Father Weeks, had the courage to give him shelter at his abbey. Oakland Democratic Party honcho Ignacio De La Fuente mobilized a nearby school and its staff for a “protest,” including elementary schoolchildren, manipulating fears among Latino families against a black ex-con who had never been convicted of molesting children.

The anti-sex witchhunt has also proved a useful tool in the crusade for anti-immigrant bigotry. A worldwide U.S./UN campaign against “human trafficking” attempts to smear all illegal women immigrants as “sex slaves,” leading to their deportation (see “U.S./UN Crusade Against ‘Sex Trafficking’,” Spartacist No. 58, Spring 2004). Recently the San Francisco Chronicle ran a sensationalist series about “sex slavery” in the city, prompting a crackdown on largely Asian-staffed massage parlors. In July 2005 a federal raid led to arrest of 45 people statewide for running a sex-trafficking ring between South Korea, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Harassment and deportation of immigrants is repackaged as “defending the victims.”

At bottom, the anti-sex witchhunt serves to bolster the capitalist order through propping up its three key supports: the state, organized religion, and the institution of the family, the central source of women’s oppression. It will take a socialist revolution to sweep away the capitalist system and replace the family with socialized childcare and housework, freeing women to play a full role in social and political life. For women’s liberation through socialist revolution!