The headline on Matt Philbin’s May 21 MRC Culture & Media Institute article screams, “Left Defends Accused Child Molester Because She’s Lesbian.” But it sounds like Philbin’s attacking her because she’s lesbian:
When your 18-year-old daughter is expelled and charged with sexual battery of a child, one option is to go public and declare she’s a martyr under fire from anti-gay bias. That’s the approach taken by the parents of Kaitlyn Hunt, a Florida teen who faces two felony charges of “lewd or lascivious battery” on a child. And sure enough, the tactic has earned Hunt some high-profile left-wing media defenders.
According to the charges, Hunt, a senior at Sebastian River High School who was set to graduate this spring, pressured a 14-year-old girl four years her junior to be her “girlfriend” and engage in sexual activity with her. But when Kaitlyn faced prosecution from her underage partner’s parents, her own parents and gay activists immediately granted her victim status, claiming she was unjustly persecuted for being homosexual.
Would Philbin be writing about Kaitlyn Hunt if she wasn’t a lesbian? Probably not — we searched the MRC archives and found nothing at all about Genarlow Wilson, a 17-year-old male who was convicted of child molestation for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a New Year’s party and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Philbin went on to whine:
Clearly, Hunt’s parents and her supporters in their “Stop the Hate, Free Kate” Facebook group disagree. They are portraying her story as a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet – two lovers separated by people who just don’t understand.
Actually nobody’s doing that — as the link Philbin himself provides. It goes to an article about what’s called a Romeo and Juliet law, which exists in several states to deal with situations such as the Hunt case, in which teenagers, one of whom is underage, get involved in a consensual sexual relationship. The goal is to keep the older teen from being branded a sex offender if the facts warrant it.
Philbin goes on to claim that those supporting Hunt are “homosexual activists anxious to topple any and all rules regarding sex.” He offers no evidence to back this up, of course — he’s too slavishly devoted to his employer’s anti-gay agenda to care about such things.