Why queers should care about sex offenders

A recent example of criminalizing queer relationships is the case of Kaitlyn Hunt. Kaitlyn is a now-18-year-old girl who is being charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious battery of a child resulting from an allegedly consensual relationship with her 15-year-old girlfriend. The Internet has seen a groundswell of support for Kaitlyn, finding her persecution homophobic, unfair, and misguided. This reaction is certainly warranted and points to a larger issue with age-of-consent legislation. This type of legal action takes place all the time, in all types of communities, resulting in new sex offenders to label, monitor, and vilify. The case of Kaitlyn Hunt should open our eyes to the ways in which sex laws are abused in our country -- not just for queers but for everyone.

The people we have labeled sex offenders are a multifarious group, with a wide spectrum of sexual desires. Empathy is needed for the group as a whole to ensure that they do not continue to be the cultural pariahs that we queers, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender folk once were, and arguably still are. If we allow for the continuation of inhumane imprisonment based on what dominant culture and the government deem "bad sex," we put ourselves at risk of further condemnation.

source: Article 'Why Queers Should Care About Sex Offenders' by Andrew Extein; www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-extein-msw/why-queers-should-care-about-sex-offenders_b_3386970.html; HuffPost Gay Voices; 8 June 2013