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UPDATE: California Democrats Gut Amendment to Make Buying Minors for Sex a Felony

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  May 02, 2025 12:01 PM

If you need the backstory here, read this post from yesterday, which lays the facts out in all their sordid inglory.  A coalition of some Democrats, Republicans and law enforcement officials have been attempting to undo some of the harm to children embedded in a number of terrible California laws.  Perhaps most notably, they're rightly targeting a 2024 "compromise" -- made at the insistence of "progressives" -- that re-established the purchase of children for sex as a felony, but only after a carve-out exempting sexual solicitation of 16- and 17-year-old minors was added to the legislative language.  Buying those children for sex, which is often tied to all sorts of other heinous sexual exploitation and crimes like trafficking, remained a mere misdemeanor under state law.  This week's efforts to eliminate that appalling loophole was defeated yesterday, overwhelmingly, by Sacramento Democrats, who gutted and watered down the amendment's language as to make it worthless and unenforceable.  

The amendment's Democratic sponsor voted against this gutting, as did several other Democrats, along with unified Republicans. But it passed anyway (55-21) under California's regime of one-party rule.  Look at this absolute disgrace:


Perversely, legislators debated and cast this vote on 'denim day,' which features lawmakers dressed in jeans to their signal support for Sexual Assault Awareness Month.  Signal being the operative word:


Carl DeMaio, a Republican from Southern California whose interview I posted yesterday, passionately opposed this pro-child prostitution abomination.  Ruling Democrats scolded him for violating a parliamentary rule by naming a fellow legislator, even in a positive context.  That's what raised their faux ire, as opposed to the child sex exploitation they have enabled.  Note his points about Gov. Gavin Newsom, who now says he favors all child solicitation being a felony, but who's paved the way for all of this with the bills he's signed:


During the floor debate, in an especially loathsome move, one Democrat suggested that DeMaio (who is gay) is betraying gay "civil rights" by demanding that purchasing minors for sex be a felony under California law.  I cannot contain my contempt for everything that this clip represents:

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I'll observe, broadly speaking, that pretending that child sexual solicitation and exploitation is somehow a gay "civil rights" issue seems more like a confession from some people than any sort of reasoned or defensible policy stance.  If radical activists take offense to being labeled "groomers" by critics, they might want to consider not conflating child sexual solicitation and exploitation with gay rights, and enshrining the former in law, using the latter as their excuse.  It's sickening.  Some of the politicians who voted for gutting the amendment claim they "intend" to install additional protections for 16- and 17-year-olds later in the year.  We'll see, but I wouldn't hold your breath.  But there's a reason why certain forces fought tooth and nail to make this crime category misdemeanors, then battled fiercely for the carve-out, then strongly opposed closing the loophole this week. Why "intend" to do something later while refusing to do so now?