Every Halloween, in virtually every community, some obsessed individuals play out their heroic rescue fantasies by scaring everyone else about the dangers our precious kids face from strangers waiting to molest them.
Websites, local newspapers, TV morning shows, and activist groups dutifully repeat the same story: that people on Sex Offender Registries right in your own town are treacherous.
And yet the data…
Each Halloween, vigilantes demand the home of every registered sex offender be marked “to protect the public.”
Science says this is nonsense.
In just 72 hours, the sun will set and young kids will start cruising up and down my street. Costumed, faces painted, they’ll have one thing on their Halloween minds—sugar.
However, their parents are supposed to be thinking about predators, who supposedly lurk behind every door, and inside every clown costume.
A new Alabama law requires that felons convicted of having sex with children and now getting out on parole take drugs that will chemically castrate them. If they refuse they can be kept in prison—even if they have absolutely no sexual interest in children.
This law satisfies the bloodlust of Alabamians, but will NOT make their children safer.
Florida has criminalized sex dolls that look like children. Arizona has declared porn a public health crisis.
Both were done without input from scientists, sex experts, or consumers.
“Consent” is only one aspect of sexuality; focussing on it too much distracts us from other important policy issues regarding sex. It also ignores the central role of ambivalence and ambiguity in sexual decision-making.