flawed argument

Glenn Greenwald is being dragged for suggesting Matt Gaetz has a right to commit statutory rape

Glenn Greenwald is currently taking heat on Twitter after he suggested that Matt Gaetz is legally entitled to have sex with whatever “consenting” 17-year-old girl he pleases.

As you’ve likely heard by now, the Florida lawmaker is currently ensnared in a teen sex/prostitution scandal involving a 17-year-old girl and $900 transferred on Venmo to an accused child sex trafficker who is currently sitting in a jail cell.

None of Gaetz’s Republican colleagues are sticking up for him, except for Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan, who is currently ensnared in his own college wrestling gay sex abuse scandal. And even Fox News wants nothing to do with Gaetz.

But for whatever reason, Greenwald, who is openly gay, has decided to come to the antigay congressman’s defense.

“If you don’t think it should be legal for 17 year-olds to have sex with anyone they want, go write to the governors and legislatures in 37 states & the District of Columbia which made it legal,” Greenwald recently tweeted while defending Gaetz.

There’s just one teeny tiny problem with this. And by “one teeny tiny problem” we mean a glaring omission of some pretty important details about age of consent laws.

Raw Story notes:

[Greenwald] failed to note that many states that allow 16 or 17 year olds to have sex require that both consenting partners be of similar ages. For example, Virginia has a close in age exemption that allows teens between 15-17 to have sex with each other. At age 38, Gaetz could not legally have sex with a 17-year-old girl in Virginia because the de facto age of consent is 18 years old.

Another important detail Greenwald neglected to mention is that the age of consent in Florida is 18, meaning a 38-year-old man having sex with a 17-year-old girl would be considered statutory rape under state law.

In a followup tweet, a defiant Greenwald wrote, “I think consenting adults should be able to do what they want in their private lives and those who try to control them or restrict their choices or impose judgments on moral grounds are creepy sexual morality police similar to the Moral Majority & Pat Robertson of the 1980s.”

And we would tend to agree. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with consenting adults having sex with one another. It happens all the time, and sex is a beautiful thing. The problem is, in Gaetz’s case, that doesn’t appear to be what happened.

Also missing from Greenwald’s defense of Gaetz was any mention of the sex trafficking accusations being made against him or the allegations of illegal drug use.

Gaetz insists he is not guilty of any wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of a $25 million extortion plot.

Here’s what folx on Twitter are saying about Greenwald’s deeply flawed defense of Gaetz…

Graham Gremore is the Features Editor and a Staff Writer at Queerty. Follow him on Twitter @grahamgremore.

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