The publication of the consciousness-raising novel "Lolita"
made us aware of the existence of the prematurely sexual female, the
underaged seductress. Today, barely pubescent females leer at us
from fashion magazines and underwear ads, and Hollywood arouses lust with
sexpots who have not yet reached the age of consent.
Although our culture is cluttered with signs of underaged
female sexuality, feminists and child advocates - two well-organized
interest groups - profess never to have encountered the phenomenon. They
have jumped all over Maryland Circuit Judge Durke G. Thompson for saying
that the underaged female involved was not blameless when he sentenced a
24-year old male to jail for a sex offense.
Thompson did not blame the girl and let the male off. He
put the legal blame where the law puts it - on the adult. He just said
that the girl played a part in the sexual encounter that was not
appropriate for one her age.
For all we know the judge was only bemoaning our
Lolita culture in which girls lose their virginity (a quaint old-fashioned
phrase) in elementary school.
But that is not the way programmed and pre-scripted "women
and child advocates" see it. The want the judge "investigated," that is,
dismissed or forced to resign.
Maryland state Delegate Sharon Grosfeld, a member of the
Women's Caucus, sees the judge's social comment as an "egregious action."
"We just don't want something informal done," she says. Grosfeld, a
Montgomery County Democrat, says that sentencing Thompson to therapy and
sensitivity training is not enough punishment to allow him to stay on the
bench.
The judge's removal is warranted because he did not
automatically, unequivocally, unthinkingly assign all the blame to the
man.
The judge is in trouble because he does not comprehend
that assigning any blame at all to a member of a victims group is an
unmistakable sign of moral turpitude.
"If this is the type of treatment we can be subject to,
then we need to speak out about it," declared Colleen Dermody, president
of the Maryland chapter of the National Organization for Women. Note the
use of the pronoun "we."
Dermody is saying that women in general have been wronged
by the judge's remarks and that all women have been harmed by the judge's
comment about the inappropriate behavior of one individual.
A person could understand the fuss if NOW had carefully
investigated the case, found no evidence to support the judge's opinion of
the girl's role and demanded that he retract the slur on her reputation.
But this is not what NOW is saying. The feminists are
saying that the judge has to go because he assigned a piece of the blame
to the female.
Feminists rage at Thompson's denial of the automatic
victim status of women but utter not a peep of protest over real judicial
outrages. For example, no feminist voice has been raised against the
prejudicial actions of Federal District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, who
protected Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party by assigning four criminal
cases to FOB (friends of Bill) judges.
The four Clinton judges handed down the desired "fix" but
were overturned by higher courts. Johnson is under investigation for
impropriety, and a House investigative committee, which has oversight
authority over the courts, has discovered that Johnson also made
inappropriate case assignments in other instances that were potentially
embarrassing to Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Neither have feminists uttered a word of support for
Sheryl L. Hall, former White House manager of computer operations. Hall
recently revealed that the Clinton White House hid 100,000 subpoenaed
e-mail messages having to do with the Monica Lewinsky affair, the
purloined FBI files on Republicans and various campaign finance
shenanigans.
In the United States today, the most shrill and
politicized groups are victims groups. These organizations have no concept
of a rule of law. For victims groups, law is a weapon with which to obtain
special privileges and to destroy those who are perceived to have made
them victims.
A victims group, which will raise no voice against
political corruption on the federal bench but will pursue a judge for his
social comment, has no credibility. The National Organization for Women is
a national disgrace.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin fellow at the
Institute for Political Economy, research fellow at the Independent
Institute and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University. He has also published many books and journals and has
testified before committees of Congress on over 30
occasions.