A Fortnight of Follies
Our nation decided the answers to many questions on November 6th, some more publicized than others. One that perhaps did not get the publicity it deserved was California’s Proposition 35. Nominally a proposal to increase the penalties for sex trafficking, Prop 35 contained another provision that should have been—though apparently wasn’t— very controversial.
Namely, Prop 35 requires all registered sex offenders (not just those convicted of sex trafficking) to continuously register their Internet service providers and identifiers (such as user names) with the government.
Disturbingly enough, no one—not even the proposition’s eerily rare opponents—seemed to notice this egregious civil rights violation until after it passed with an overwhelming 81% of the vote. To their credit, the American Civil Liberties Union did come out against Prop 35 and has now filed a lawsuit to stay its enforcement. However, their involvement could have and should have been much more public. It is beyond me, for instance, why the ACLU didn’t write against the proposition in California’s voter information booklet. This booklet is published by the office of the California Secretary of State, is available online, and is distributed to registered voters statewide. It contains summaries of each proposition on the ballot, as well as arguments for and against each submitted by various supporters and opponents.
But the ACLU wasn’t featured in the pamphlet as an opponent of Prop 35. In fact, the only ones writing against it were Norma Jean Almodovar, Starchild, and the president and CFO of an organization called Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education, and Research Project, Inc. For those who do not know, Norma Jean Almodovar is a former Los Angeles police officer, the title of whose book From Cop to Call Girl pretty much says it all. And Starchild, too, is an “erotic services provider” and an outspoken Libertarian activist.
On the other hand, proponents arguing for Prop 35 in the voter booklet included multiple self-proclaimed human trafficking survivors, the California Police Chiefs Association, and a county District Attorney.
So, you don’t need a degree in political science to be able to tell who was winning the PR war on Prop 35. If you could call it a war—or even a low-grade military action. According to a California PBS station, not a single financial contribution to an anti-35 group was ever reported. And this is opposed to the over 200 contributions reported to have been made in support of Prop 35.
Among Prop 35’s financial backers were the National Education Association and the California Teachers Union, whose political clout in the state could possibly help explain the lack of public opposition to the proposal.
The take-away point from all this, though, is that there were virtually no visible opponents to Prop 35 who were not involved with the sex industry. And even those opponents, in their voter booklet arguments, did not cite the requirement that sex offenders register their online identification information with the state as a reason to vote against it.
California’s normally vocal and tumultuous political community was curiously quiet about this issue and seemed curiously unaware of the dangerous precedent Prop 35 sets for the privacy rights they are normally so adamant about protecting.
With any luck, this issue and others like it will not remain out of the spotlight, for the day we as citizens start ignoring small but definite attempts to revoke our civil rights and liberties, will be a dark one for democracy and for human freedom.
Lucia Rafanelli is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at lmr93@cornell.edu.