Sex Hysteria!

An Honor Roll of people, organizations, agencies, and laws that have contributed to or exemplified America’s irrational attitudes towards sex and nudity.

Butler, Tom

In 1998, Tom Butler accidentally sponsored Alabama’s infamous sex toy ban while trying to close down strip clubs.  According to Nerve, “In what proved to be a crucial oversight, none of the legislators (including the bill’s sponsor, Tom Butler) read the bill before voting unanimously to pass it.”    While there has been some interest in repealing the ban, those efforts have been actively opposed by Christian groups interested in criminalizing sexual nonconformity.

Tom Butler, is a Democratic Alabama state senator from Huntsville, which might help to dispel the common assertion that right wing republicans are the only politicians who reserve the right to dictate what happens in your bedroom.  The law has been challenged repeatedly and has been upheld at both the state and federal level since commercial activity has been largely excluded from any Constitutional promise of freedom, thereby permitting state control of any human activity touched by a commercial enterprise (which includes almost all human activity, of course).

Some time ago, I created my own little tribute to the sex toy ban.

Hernandez-Vega, Jenifer Yois

Assistant U.S. Attorney who aggressively pursued the prosecution of Carlos Alfredo Simon-Timmerman for possession of child pornography from his arrest in August 2009 until the court ordered the charges dropped in April 2010.  The only problem was that it wasn’t child pornography and any cop or prosecutor with a double-digit IQ should have known that.  Unfortunately, anti-sex crusaders have never been known for their intellectual prowess.

The child porn that  had in his possession was a video called “Little Lupe the Innocent; Don’t Be Fooled By Her Baby Face.” The movie stared noted film actress Lupe Fuentes.

Despite the fact that it would have been a simple matter to verify the age of the porn star, Assistant U.S. Atorney Jenifer Yois Hernandez-Vega proceeded to prosecute Simon-Timmerman based solely on the fact that the star looks under age.  Yep, that’s correct.   Prosecutor Hernandez-Vega apparently thinks that a guess based on nothing more than appearance trumps the actual fact of her age.  And, with that philosophy as her guide, proceeded to destroy someone’s life with, as a federal prosecutor, total immunity from any kind of disciplinary action.

Jagels, Ed

Jagels, as the Kern County, California District Attorney, is best known for his utterly rabid prosecution of dozens of people for child sex abuse during the 1980s ultimately kicking off a nationwide hysteria and campaign of false convictions that is unparalleled in modern America.  He epitomizes the crusader who terrorizes whole families in an attempt to save children from imagined threats.  He is not alone.   Despite the destruction he wrought on inncoent lives, he remained in his position until he retired in 2009.  The story of the Kern County child sex abuse debacle is portrayed in the movie, Witch Hunt.

McFarlane, Kee

Kee McFarlane was a key player in the crusade accusing the operators  of the  McMartin Preschool in Los Angeles County California with hundreds of counts of child sex abuse.   As a social worker and psychotherapist wannabe with the Childrens Institute International she and her associates interviewed some 400 children in the McMartin Preschool case.  Her refusal to believe the children’s denials along with the application of intense goading and intimidation techniques ultimately led to claims that 360 children had been molested.   After a seven year trial, purported to be the most expensive in U.S. history at $15 million,  not a single conviction was handed down by the jury.    Characteristic of almost all the day care sex abuse cases of that period , the rabid ambitions of  incompetent witch hunters like Kee McFarlane utterly destroyed entire families without suffering so much as a scratch to themselves.