THE ACQUITTAL
June 14, 2005

by Joe Sobran

     As you may have heard by the time you read this, 
Michael Jackson has been acquitted on all ten of the 
charges brought against him. At least if you haven't 
heard, you're probably not checking your smoke signals 
often enough.

     I love what the Roman fellow said: "Nothing human is 
alien to me." But I've long regarded Michael Jackson as 
the test case of that venerable adage. Even in 
California, he stands out.

     Still, I'm relieved that he wasn't convicted. If 
it's the government versus Michael Jackson -- or, as they 
say, The People v. Michael Jackson -- I'll root for 
Michael every time. Too many of the people have been 
having too much unholy glee at Michael's expense. They 
remind me of the mob who turned out to punish the woman 
caught committing adultery, with the law on their side 
and stones in their hands. Jesus didn't criticize the 
law, but he suggested that the first stone be thrown by 
some guy who'd never sinned himself. The woman walked 
(albeit with a firm warning).

     As the prosecution brought lurid testimony against 
Jacko, I asked myself how I might be made to look if the 
government could invite, or force, all the acquaintances 
I've ever made to testify against me. The truth would be 
bad enough; but add to that the lies that my enemies 
would be glad to repeat, and which the public would be 
willing to believe, and even an acquittal wouldn't do 
much to repair the damage.

     In Jacko's case, of course, there's a special angle. 
Child molesting is one of those things -- like 
flag burning, pot smoking, and Holocaust denial -- that 
cause some people to freak out. It's not enough to say 
you're against them; if you oppose them with anything 
less than hysteria, some readers are sure to assume you 
favor them. One of the things writing for a living 
teaches you is that, no matter how clearly you think 
you've written, people may read the most bizarre things 
into your work, clean opposite to what you've actually 
said.

     I used to freak over child molesting myself. I once 
suspected a houseguest of having lewd designs on my 
grandson, though I couldn't prove it, so I invented a 
feeble pretext for requiring him to leave. On another 
occasion an in-law was convicted of sodomizing boys.

     To my surprise, I found myself unable to dislike or 
despise either man. I pitied them both. They were 
afflicted with a temptation God had spared me. Imagine 
living with an illicit desire so vehemently condemned by 
society!

     This is the part where some people would no doubt 
condemn discrimination against child molesters -- or 
"pedophilic Americans," as they'd no doubt call them. And 
this is just where I think it's important to keep a 
difficult balance and sense of proportion between sin and 
sinner.

     Child molesting is a serious sin. Even liberals 
don't make light of it. But it's the prevalent hysteria 
on the subject that gives me pause. By all means, 
children should be protected from it; I've also known 
kids whose lives were terribly damaged by it (girls, I 
think, more than boys). And yet others seem to suffer no 
permanent or irreparable harm. The vice has been commonly 
accepted in some civilizations, and most of their members 
seem to have been pretty normal.

     St. Thomas Aquinas held that most sexual sins were 
mortal, since they abuse our life-giving faculties, yet 
also that they were less serious than other mortal sins, 
because they are merely carnal, not spiritual. Of course 
they may be more grave when they also involve infidelity, 
seduction, and betrayal, which are not merely sins of the 
flesh, but offenses against justice, charity, and other 
duties.

     Today some people openly defend pedophilia, and no 
doubt many others secretly approve of it. This shouldn't 
surprise us. American culture, once notoriously 
puritanical, now contemns the virtue of chastity, and if 
Michael Jackson had made a reputation for collecting 
women, he'd be widely admired in the same publications 
that now want to stone him.

     But when he's suspected of collecting boys -- a 
suspicion he's done little to discourage -- even liberals 
become raging Puritans. Jacko must be wondering what the 
rules are in this country nowadays. Hugh Hefner, our 
senior philosopher, has never explained why, if sexual 
pleasure is essentially good, it's depraved when enjoyed 
with children.

     We no longer recognize anything as a sin, but we 
still want to have our public sinners. Stoning them is so 
much fun.

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