Louisiana close to allowing sex offenders to be surgically castrated

[DaleCooper]

Admittedly my initial post was pretty rude, so I've deleted it and will type a list of reasons why this is obviously a bad idea. Anyone whose brain hasn't been fried by QAnon culture should be able to figure these out on his own, but that's not the world we're living in so here it goes.

1. Generally, I think it's best to avoid eugenics in our criminal justice system. I think even more than the death penalty this is not a slippery slope we should go down. Surgical mutilation as a form of punishment can get very out of control. Why not lobotomize repeat violent offenders? Seriously, why not at this point?

2. This is not politically correct to say post-MeToo, but rape and sexual offenses are incredibly easy to lie about. There's a reason why so many lynchings were based on fake accusations of sexual misconduct. Even child sexual abuse is easy to lie about. It is not uncommon for parents to coach their children into making fake abuse allegations against the other parent or potentially a step-parent, and that's not even to mention the "recovered memories" crap which put people behind bars over fake sexual abuse allegations.

3. This encourages suspects to murder victims, accusers, witnesses, and police officers rather than be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. This will be even more true once the death penalty starts coming back for sex offenses.

4. This discourages victims from coming forward. Most victims are victimized by friends or loved ones and many of them will not want to see family members subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. Again, this will be an even bigger problem once the death penalty comes back for sex offenses.

I'm sure there are more, but those are the obvious and most destructive ones. But this whole thing is a virtue signal. This is QAnon paranoia gone mainstream, and a significant portion of the legislature probably knows this is wrong, but they voted for it anyway because they don't want to get accused of being pedos for not supporting the castration bill. This hysteria is going to keep getting worse if someone doesn't stand up to it now.

EDIT: To clarify for the dumb people, my second point is not implying that all or most allegations are fake, I'm just pointing out that a lot of men have been thrown in jail (or worse) over false allegations of sexual crimes.  

[DaleCooper]

People who propose and endorse these types of laws do not care about protecting women or kids. They are nothing more than sadists who get off on the feeling of moral superiority that comes with punishing others. This country's sick fetishization of death, castration, incarceration, police brutality, and other forms of institutionalized torture and abuse is an indicator of a society in steep decline into utter depravity. Be ashamed.

I suspect a lot of them are sex offenders or sexual deviants themselves, and supporting draconian legislation like this is either their way of covering their tracks or making themselves feel as though they've made amends for past crimes. There are a number of stories about co-sponsors of bills like this that end up being child molesters or pedos themselves. Another example would be that Sound of Freedom guy, whose entire "anti-trafficking" group turned out to be a scam to force female colleagues into having sex with him.

Here's some good advice for anybody in this thread or anywhere else who feels the need to constantly talk about how much they hate sexual predators, as if that's an impressive stance to take. No one is impressed, and a lot of us are just going to assume that you are into some really bad sh-t, lmao.

[DaleCooper]

I don't even see how an originalist argument could uphold a punishment like this under the Eighth Amendment. This isn't really an area of the law I'm too familiar with, but from what I've read, chemical castration is an option for the convicted. Even then, it appears to be generally reversible. For obvious reasons, surgical castration is not reversible.

I have to say a law like this is really disturbing.

Chemical castration as far as I know isn't even administered by the government in those cases - sex offenders voluntarily undergo it through non-government medical providers of their choosing. Government actors doing that would still give me pause, considering it's been used in the past to punish homosexuals (Alan Turing being a famous example.) Louisiana's legislature is doubtless full of people who think drag queens are "groomers" and I have absolutely zero confidence that this idea wouldn't be abused even if I agreed with it in principle (I do not.)

I think Turing was "voluntarily" chemically castrated, as in he was given the choice between prison or chemical castration. Obviously I hope that America would never criminalize homosexuality again, but I have absolutely no faith whatsoever that Republican judges would prevent that from happening.

Even if we are talking about actual sexual predators, I don't like the idea of the government deliberately damaging a person's body as punishment. If you really stop and think about it, there is no difference between this bill and some medieval Arabian kingdom severing the arm of a thief. It genuinely makes me more uncomfortable than the death penalty, although I have recently come around to being nearly 100% opposed to that too.

[DaleCooper]

I don't even see how an originalist argument could uphold a punishment like this under the Eighth Amendment.

https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/bill-64/

This describes a bill that failed to pass and was criticized by contemporaries (including at least one signatory of the Constitution, George Wythe) as "revolting." Sounds like decent evidence that at the time of the founding, this would have been considered cruel and unusual punishment

I posted about this the other day, but deleted it so I would have time to read the article more closely, but this example actually lines up with a lot of the criticism in this thread. For one, it was deemed to be cruel and unusual punishment by at least some of the old-school politicians back then. Thomas Jefferson even voiced concerns about the harsh penalties motivating false allegations.

Plus, ironically, Jefferson was a sexual predator himself. Obviously no Virginia law enforcement would've had any sympathy for an enslaved woman or any black person at all, but if this bill had passed and been fairly enforced then Thomas Jefferson would've been castrated as a rapist under his own law. Another anecdote to support the idea that many of the men supporting these absurd bills are sexual deviants themselves.