Fact Check: Bill Passed to Legalize Pedophilia?

On August 31, 2020, the California State Senate passed a the SB-145 bill. Immediately, numerous Facebook posts claim that bill seeks to legalize pedophilia in the state.

SB-145 bill

The claim is, of course, false, as the bill is intended to reform the sex offender registry of the state to be fairer to young LGBT adults who may be in technical violation of statutory rape laws. The bill seeks to treat all statutory rape cases equally.

California state senator Scott Wiener introduced the bill in early August 2020. The bill, SB-145, intends to equalize how state law treats cases of statutory rape, regardless of what kind of intercourse is involved, may it be oral, vaginal or anal, as well as digital penetration.

Under the current law, California judges have discretion over registering people of certain ages as sex offenders if they have engaged in vaginal intercourse with a minor who is both over the age of 14 and within a 10-year age range. The bill does not apply to anyone who is under 14 years of age.

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This means that rather than the young adult being an automatically registered sex offender, the judge may decide. An example is if a 24-year-old engaging in non-coercive vaginal sex with a 14-year-old.

A common example, which it would be inappropriate to add a person to the registry, would be a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old having vaginal sex.

If the situations stated involved oral sex, anal sex or digital penetration, which is more typical among the LGBT community, a judge would not have discretion over the young adult's registration as a sex offender. Instead, the registration would be automatic.

This is what Sen, Wiener stated that the current law in California is not fair for everyone as it discriminates the LGTQ community who does not get the fair trial when it comes to sex.

There were Facebook posts that claim that SB-145 allow pedophilia in the state and that it is considered as a sexual orientation and added to the LGBTQ community. However, this is false.

The SB-145 amends Section 290 of the existing state penal code to apply the same standard of judicial discretion to straight people and LGBT people alike.

Basically, the SB-145 is an anti-discrimination law that ends discrimination against LGBTQ people on the sex offender registry.

According to Mother Jones, "LGBTQ advocates argue the situation unfairly penalizes people who do not engage in penile-vaginal intercourse, a problem that Sen. Wiener's legislation aims to fix."

As reported by Sacramento Bee, the state senator has faced online harassment from troll accounts and followers of QAnon, which is a conspiracy theory community spreading misinformation about topics from alien landings to the safety of vaccines.

On August 6, Sen. Wiener began a Twitter thread and shared some of the homophobic, violent and antisemitic messages that he has received.

The truth

It is not true that the SB-145 legalizes pedophilia, it also does not classify pedophilia as a sexual orientation. The bill extends the same discretion state judges currently have over sex offender registration for certain young adults who have engaged in vaginal sex with minors to those who have engaged in non-vaginal sex.