Newsom Signs Bill to Amend Sex Offender Law Reducing Penalties For Sex with ‘Willing’ Same-Sex Minors

Gavin Newsom

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday night signed a bill that would allow judges to decide whether to list a man as a sex offender for having oral or anal sex with a same-sex minor.

The bill lowers the penalties for adults who have sex with ‘willing’ same-sex minors. A Judge could decide if the adult has to register as sex offender if the offender is within 10 years of age of the victim.

The bill does not apply to minors under the age of 14.

SB 145 was introduced by state senator Scott Wiener and passed the California legislature last week. 

Since 1944, judges decided whether a man had to register as a sex offender if he had sex with a female minor 14 years of age or older when the age difference is not more than 10 years, so Wiener argued that since the law didn’t apply to young boys, the LBGTQ community was being ‘discriminated against.’

The law ends discrimination “by treating LGBTQ young people the exact same way that straight young people have been treated since 1944,” Wiener said in a statement last week, adding: “Today, California took yet another step toward an equitable society.”

In other words, Scott Wiener is arguing that a 14-year-old boy can actually consent to sex with a 24-year-old grown man (predator).

The bill passed the Democrat-led assembly, however it was even too much for some Democrat state lawmakers.

25 Assembly members voted against the bill. It passed with 41 votes, with 13 lawmakers not voting and then it cleared the senate with a 23-10 vote (7 senators did not vote).

“I cannot in my mind as a mother understand how sex between a 24-year-old and a 14-year-old could ever be consensual, how it could ever not be a registrable offense,” Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, said before the bill’s passage last week. “We should never give up on this idea that children should be in no way subject to a predator.”

Senator Ted Cruz blasted California Democrats.

“Today’s California Democrats believe we need more adults having sex with children, and when they do, they shouldn’t register as sex offenders,” Ted Cruz said. “This is extreme and very harmful to kids.”