The Cruel and Unusual Punishment of Genarlow Wilson

The Georgia Supreme Court needs to be commended for reversing the
ten-year sentence of Genarlow Wilson, deciding that it constitutes
"cruel and unusual punishment." For those who do not know, Wilson was
convicted in 2005 of aggravated child molestation. His heinous crime
was having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old when he himself was
only 17. He faced years in prison and being labeled a sex offender for
doing what comes naturally to teenagers. In a further blow to
fairness, the Georgia state legistlature changed the law last year to
make these sexual encounters misdemeanors, but did not make it
retroactive--meaning Wilson would remain in prison as a convicted felon.

This is what happens in an uptight, conservative environment in which sex is villifed in the name of religion and values: the ruination of a life. Here we have a young man who was an honor student, football star, and homecoming king, and who is now, as he observantly states, going to major in sociology "because I feel like I've been living my major." He lost two years of his youth to a misguided and deplorable attempt to control teenage sexual exploration. I am confident that more than one of the people who read these words would be "guilty" of a similar "crime."

To further illustrate how ridiculous this conviction truly was: if Wilson and the girl had had consensual intercourse, he would have committed a misdemeanor, thus facing twelve months with no sex offender status. It was the fellatio which made the charge aggravated. Up until 1998, it was illegal in Georgia even for a husband and wife to have oral sex.

And then there is the truly disturbing implication in this: that a 15-year-old girl is incapable, indeed disallowed by law, to consent to sex. There are many reasons why it is not advisable in modern society for either gender to have sex at that age, but it is condescending to unequivocally state that a teenager cannot decide for his or herself. Once again, we see the state, operating in a religious context, attempting to exert control over body and mind.

We should applaud Genarlow Wilson in the way he calmly states that he has no "negative energy" toward the district attorney who fought efforts to get his sentence reduced. After spending two years in prison for a non-crime, how many of us could say the same? If we are vigilent, and continue to fight these enemies of intellectual and sexual freedom who create repressive laws to form their perfect moral society, hopefully we will never be in a position to find out.

The Nobel Propaganda Prize

Al Gore? With monks facing bullets in Myanmar, journalists being suppressed and killed in Russia, terrorism and poverty and sickness rampant worldwide, The Man who Was Almost President is the most deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize? Of course, the prize has a history of questionable winners--for every Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, you have Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, and Yasser Arafat (and I do not mean to compare Al Gore to these last three in terms of moral equivalency--he is far superior).

I do like Gore, and I appreciate the passion with which he promotes his cause. He does a tremendous service in raising awareness that more attention and money need to be devoted to the environment and renewable energy sources. But on climate change he has acted irresponsibly—by playing Chicken Little. News flash: the sky is not falling. Disaster is not imminent. Sea levels are not about to rise 20 feet and swallow Florida. The end is not nigh.

A high court judge in the UK found An Inconvenient Truth to be "alarmist" and "one-sided," and to include nine key errors. Unfortunately, the most popular "documentaries" are in reality propaganda pieces (see: Michael Moore). We would be better served if they were actually careful examinations of the science and arguments on both sides, thus allowing the viewer to come to his/her own conclusion. Science is the pursuit of truth. Knowledge advances through debate and disagreement—has there truly been a debate on climate change? I do not mean if the planet is warming or not—it is. But what is the net result of such change? What can we expect? To what degree are humans responsible? How much can be attributed to natural causes? What is the silver lining? Is there anything we can actually do to stop it, or are we better off focusing our efforts on adaptation?

The key point here: climate change does not necessarily have to be bad; undoubtedly some will have to make changes to their way of life, but for others it could mean an increase in quality of life. With increased warmth, agriculture could grow in places where it could not before. Also, there will be less cold-related deaths, which far outnumber heat-related ones. What other benefits are there and, for those who will be negatively impacted, how can we use our ingenuity to offset the change? Such inquiry is unfortunately not politically correct; we are not supposed to say that an island in the south Pacific must adapt because of the Western world's use of fossil fuels. But does anyone believe that humans, overall, would have been better off without the use of oil and coal? If so, I would like to hear your argument against mankind's progress.

The judge reviewed the movie because someone objected to it being shown to children in school. The environment is a subject that kids must learn about; but when they are more scared of climate change than terrorism, something is very wrong: sixty percent of middle school children surveyed are frightened most by global warming and other natural disasters, compared to only 22 percent for terrorism. Horror films like The Day After Tomorrow do not help. They should be more scared about politicians' assaults, from both the right and left, on science--how little money is going to renewable energy research, stem cells, and space exploration, and how politicized the research is.

Instead of indoctrinating people to be in a perpetual state of fear, we should be teaching them to be more waste-and-energy conscious. And we most certainly need better science education. I have had people say to me that recent events, earthquakes, tsunamis, and Hurricane Katrina, were a direct result of global warming. Katrina was a category 3 storm when it made landfall (more powerful storms have hit the Gulf Coast decades ago). The reason it was so destructive was not climate change, but the failure of the government to adequately build and maintain flood defenses. There are many who blame every ill on global warming. How could people be so ill-informed? We must stop politicizing science and getting science lessons from politicians.

Research must lead the way to policy, not the other way around.