In November 2024, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his name from consideration as President-elect Donald Trump's attorney general, as federal investigators said they discovered payments he made to a number of women in exchange for sex.
"Women"? Is there something preventing journalists from calling 17 year olds children, like they are?
They're just so used to it, statistically just about all the prostitution in the US is minors who are being abused, and sex trafficed. Most come out of the foster system, most children don't have to worry about aging out of family care, and the gov has a lot of really shitty little loopholes to cut foster kids out of any benifits as quick as they turn 18 if they still qualify for anything. This is a passive system that everyone in power is not willing to discuss or deal with it, police have been fighting legislation that says they can't just have sex with minors who are being sex trafficed to arrest them for prostitution. And they even fight against legislation that says they can't have ''consensual'' sex with people they arrest or are to guard. The news also wields power and they also don't want to talk about it, or report on it.
Honestly 18 is an arbitrary number, yes. But looking back on it, I was a child till at least 24. Until you can stand on your own, you're a child. Matt Gaetz is a pedophile regardless of arbitrary numbers and definitions.
I mean, I get where you're coming from. There are a lot of people who say 17, and treat that like the individual in question is 7. Which is pretty weird.
As a school transportation worker, I find your opinion nauseating. 17 year olds are NOT adults. They are minors, and if you feel comfortable treating them as an adult there something very wrong with you. For the good of the species, do better, we should love our children enough to keep them safe.
He defended his vote in a Facebook live video in December 2017, saying, "Unless there is an overwhelming, compelling reason that our existing agencies in the federal government can't handle that problem, I vote no because voters in Northwest Florida did not send me to Washington to go and create more federal government. If anything, we should be abolishing a lot of the agencies at the federal level like the Department of Education, like the EPA and sending that power back to our state governments."