ndrosen

Something called the Protection Against Child Exploitation Act of 2017 has passed the House, and I have written to my two Senators, urging them to oppose it. (My Congressman, Don Beyer, deserves commendation for voting against it, despite a name chosen to make it sound virtuous.) According to what I've read, this bill would apply a fifteen year mandatory minimum to producing or conspiring to obtain child pornography, which might be a good idea if it applied only to forty year old creeps who molest prepubescent children and photograph their criminal acts.

However, it would also apply to teenagers, so that a sixteen year old girl who sends a nude selfie to her boyfriend could apparently be sent to prison for many years, as could a teenage boy who so much as tries to persuade a girl ("conspires") to send him a sext. You don't have to approve of behavior like this to think that it should not be punished more severely than actual rape.

Please get in touch with your senators.