U.S. Senator Al Franken has announced that he will soon resign. The public reason he gave for his resignation is that he has been accused of sexual misconduct. The real reason, however, may be something quite different.
For how does a man, even a U.S. Senator, defend himself after he has been accused of sexual misconduct in a society that assumes guilt rather than innocence when a person has been accused of such an offense? A society that ignores important safeguards of the Constitution including that we are innocent until proven guilty.
I don’t know what Sen. Franken did or didn’t do. I don’t know if his accusers are telling the truth.
What I do know is that I am frightened by what I see happening in our society today. What I see is a rush to judgment in the court of public opinion by a group of U.S. Senators calling for Sen. Franken’s resignation even though he has disputed some accusations against him and has not had the opportunity to face those who have accused him in court. What I see are elected officials, who swore under oath to protect the Constitution, ignore the Constitution by choosing a one size fits all path for anyone accused of any type of sexual misconduct .
This rush to judgment and failure to distinguish between accusations and proof is evidence of the legal environment in our country today, which can be compared to past eras when the protections of the U.S. Constitution were denied to Japanese American citizens and others. The legal environment in our country today can also be compared to past eras in other countries such as France where people were led to the guillotine because they were born of nobility.
While it is true that no one in the U.S. is being led to the guillotine today, something almost as dangerous is occurring because individuals accused of sexual misconduct are being denied the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Those individuals have a right to face those who accuse them in a court of law. They also have the right to be declared innocent until and unless it can be proven that they are guilty of the conduct of which they have been accused. Finally, if they are found guilty in a court of law, they have the right to be sentenced appropriately by a judge, not by their peers.
It is time for the United States of America to wake up! It is time for the United States to provide all of its citizens, including those accused of sexual misconduct, with the protections that flow from its Constitution.
— by Janice Bellucci
Read all Janice’s Journals
I’m a bit torn about this, for generally the same reasons I’m torn about the Brock Turner case. My opposition to the carceral state and my opposition to elite abuses of privilege and power are at odds here. In lieu of making an argument, which I don’t have time for this morning, I would posit that perhaps people like Franklin and Turner would be more willing to take full (or fuller) responsibility for their actions, wouldn’t rush to take advantage of their positions of privilege and power and instead be willing to make amends to victims, if total social death weren’t such an assured fate for those accused of sex crimes.
This was a great article, and should be on the front page of every newspaper nationally. This country really has opened a can of worms that will only get worse if not brought into the light.
They are resigning and retiring because the machine wants them gone or they were easy pickins to be sacrificial lambs for the broader agenda. And when your masters want you gone- you go. ( People who allowed into the elite circles are the most tracked and controlled people on the globe) It seems like most of the allegations against these men in media, entertainment, and politics are for ” inappropriate sexual misconduct” . I really don’t know what that means, but new legislation is already being crafted to criminalize it. Aggressively pursuing someone for a date? Uttering sexual innuendos to another adult? Will it become a crime for a man to initiate a conversation with a woman soon?
On another matter, I was recently browsing through a very respectable and popular website people frequent, to read reviews on a movie I was thinking about going to see this past weekend and what pops up?
“Alleged Pedophiles”. Catchy headline huh? I guess anyone can become a member of this site and add content ( kind of like Wikipedia) Anyway, before they listed the names and photos of 158 well known actors, directors and rock stars , they admit that they are “rumored” to be pedophiles, hebephiles and ephebophiles. This is a well known mainstream site, and they have a list of some of the most successful people ( all men) in the business- most haven’t been mentioned in the news.
My first thought was how can a website just start shaming these people? It is truly scary what is going on, but I see it as part of a broader agenda . There is a war on men and it is not good.
Media convictions are killing our country. Once in the light, even acquitted, the accused person is done. This may be over simplified but I think we are over connected and addicted to “what’s next”?
American society feels as it has been pre-programmed in a way that expected reactions to certain inputs are expected. If true, I sure would like to know and show who these group(s) are.
Janice is great.
This is awesome, Janice!
Amen!!!
This rush to judgement on this topic is 100% being led and pushed by the women’s movement. I know I’m not ever allowed to say anything whatsoever against any women or a women’s movement as women can do no wrong, they do not need to exercise any responsibility for their actions or decisions, no repercussions to men or sentence is sufficient, not even death (see other story here about even death not sufficient for a sex offender), but I will speak regardless and just be ridiculed, accused, villianized, and ruined for life.
This attitude is not the least bit new in the women’s movement. It has been the attitude on most every actual legislation they have sought for decades, very different from what they have said; what they say and what they do have been two very different things. They do not at all seek EQUALITY, which I am 110% in favor of. They seek domination, they seek rule and special privilege and entitlement. Anything you might find negative about any woman, her actions, her decision, her attitudes — it is the fault of men, not the woman.
I know, you think I’m exaggerating. No, but I really wish I were, because it has brought us to the scary situation Janice is writing about.
I saw, as one of the more recent examples, just a couple years ago in California when they changed the definitions in the laws on human trafficking, making situations that no one has ever considered to be that to now come under that law for prosecution and sentencing. Similar for the prostitution laws, all women who now themselves decide to go do that even on their own, who initiate solicitation, who take action to draw people in and “hook” them, are now deemed by law to be the “victim,” and the man they hooked, who never asked for it but got excited so said OK, is now the sole criminal, and the women are taken aside by police and they try to find ways to give the women money! This is insane. The idea is said to be that it is men’s fault the woman is a prostitute because it is decided that men have created the market for prostitution by ever having responded to the woman’s demand for money by paying it. This is insane! Women are always innocents in the lion’s den no matter what they do, what they decide, how they act, they are not responsible for anything bad no matter their actions.
I earlier years, the women’s movement pressured police enough that they got them to not worry about the women, go after the men, and from then, it became far, far less common for the woman to be arrested, decoy police are all over luring in men to bust them, they don’t even bother to go after the women. Now they have gotten the law changed so women can’t be prosecuted for prostitution because by the presumption of law they are the victims, not the perpetrators, no matter their actual actions.
This is not equality. This is the same attitude being complained about here in this thread.
They have refused to go after the women for BDSM prostitution for decades, not even the ones involved in very sick and extreme things like slicing and bleeding men, and extreme torture. But I’m certain it would be different if a man were caught doing that.
And you will be damned if you so much as ask, not even accuse, whether the woman had any amount of responsibility for whatever happened, as is the case with all these accusations of sexual harassment. There have been a couple people who raised questions, and they were so villianized by the women’s movement for simply raising a question, they were silenced under fear of their near destruction.
And a lot more, but enough of the examples. The overall attitude that has taken hold from this push by the women’s movement is exactly what is being complained about in this thread. This is NOT new from the women’s movement — what they say and what they do are two very different things. The women’s movement has reached a very powerful position in America at this point. Anyone getting on the wrong side of the women’s movement now will be utterly, completely destroyed — as is being complained about in this article. Equality, fairness for all be damned, they taste blood and they are going for the kill.
What we have going on now has been going on for some time, it has only now broken out and gone wild. If you had your eyes open, you will have seen this going on for many, many years now from the women’s movement, but for most, they must be overwhelmed by it as now before they can see.
Hillary’s campaign was always the woman’s movement, her whole career has been. Everyone wants to keep saying how competent she is, but I always asked: What did she accomplish as Secretary of State, and the answer is always silence, and the look of shock on the face of the woman I ask — and that is exactly the right answer. The answer is NOTHING. And I then would follow up with: So then how does that qualify her to be President? No answer. But the answer and attitude of the campaign was by entitlement. She is the women’s movement, and she showed at every turn that she felt ENTITLED to be president. As such, the most offensive and obnoxious and idiotic candidate to ever come along, a candidate anyone in America should have been able to trounce without even campaigning, beat her. Even if Hillary won by 1%, that would have marked her as a failure against the likes of Trump, who should have been beaten with 80% of the vote.
And the women’s movement went nuclear! They were denied their entitlement.
Did you note, most immediately after the election, about a month and a half later, milliions were organized to turn out all over America for what was called the Women’s March last January — and all subsequent marches have stemmed from that. What organization could possibly have organized such a huge thing is so short a time? Well, the Clinton political machine coupled with the women’s movement — they are hardly even separable, and together they are the most powerful organization in America now. Don;t forget, Bill Clinon’s is the president who brought us national registration, under his Attorney General Janet Reno, who was always said to be Hillary’s choice. In other words, the women’s movement brought us national registration.
They have not let up. And now it has morphed into these scary, instant, widespread determinations of guilt by mere accusation — anyone who dares to so much as ask if women might carry any responsibility is also condemned and villified, because a woman would never lie, she would never exaggerate, she would never manipulate, she would never be anything but an innocent in the lion’s den.
And what this does mean and has meant for us is — we can never be redeemed. The women’s movement has only one sentence — complete, utter destruction, and if we finish out a criminal sentence, we will suffer their sentence as registrants for long, long times, no less than 10 years but don’t count on that for a minute — wait until you get the woman’s movement considering your application. That is why the woman’s movement made it an application, not your right after that time frame. Yes,I say the women’s movement, they were all over this, they are allover the points of power — we here keep wanting to credit Jackie Lacey (one of the more devious prosecutors out there), and just where do you think she stands about the women’s movement? That is why the women’s movement not only left misdemeanants suffering from registration, they actually increased the time for three misdemeanors from 7 years to 10 years in that bill (those three statutes violations could have gotten out of registration already under the same standard by getting a COR at 7 years, now they have to wait 10 years and still ask permission and meet pretty much the same standards anyway).
Yes, I say the women’s movement, it was all over this, it is “infiltrated” (I know that sounds paranoid) through all the power centers now, including the ACLU (which somehow was in on the negotiations for this tier bill but WE were not — and I am not surprised to see this version coming from the ACLU, they have never fought the idea of registration, only an extreme part of it here and there), and the ACLU will NEVER propose anything better than the garbage fake tiers we got, which will leave tons of people of all charges out of even any hope of relief, and all others with only hope, no certainty — and those last I just mentioned are going to be very surprised, although more so in the second year of the tiers than the first. And wait until you see what these tiers now clear the way to do to registrants, who will now be portrayed as only the worst of the worst, even though they are all still suffering under it, even misdemeanants, for at least 10 years, because thee doesn’t even seem to have been any consideration of dropping misdemeanors and lesser felonies — an unconscionable failure of this bill, instead knowingly increasing from 7 years to 10 years for three misdemeanors.
We completely blew our one and only opportunity — most of the people here were completely blind, including the leaders, and would not listen.
And the women’s movement has now created an atmosphere that we can’t even speak in.
Please note that Al Fanken has yet to step down. He has only SAID he would.
It’s a moral tsunami, and I am not talking about the moral tsunami that bible thumpers like to whine about [i.e. a “growing persecution” of the Church]. In this tsunami a person is accused — she said, he said — of something society considers heinous, and people come out of the woodwork to make an accusation [and pile on] which leads to others making similar accusations of some other person. Hard evidence is seldom present, yet people believe every word of it. And when someone such as Matt Damon point out that there is a difference between assault, harassment and jokes in poor taste, something Al Franken is guilty of, they get lambasted on Twitter. There is no legal requirement for proof of inappropriate or illegal activity before a person makes a public accusation, and once made, the accused is guilty until he proves himself innocent, and in many cases, regardless of what he says or does some people would have already formed an opinion based solely on the accusation.
If it isn’t obvious, Americans have a problem with sex. Few places in the world are as prudish about sex and nudity as the United States. It’s almost a sickness in my opinion. It’s the reason our schools can’t educate students about it, and why the teen pregnancy rate is so high in the United States.
Not sure how many people are aware of this, but there was a time in the United States that, although in most states it was 13, the statuary age of consent was as low as 10-years-old. [You’ll find an interesting article on this and other similar topics @ The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University, and the University of Missouri–Kansas City website here https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230%5D
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