SEX CRIMES, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPES: II

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D.


The sex crimes in Yavapai and Coconino Counties are similar in that both of them are homosexual. In Yavapai County the crimes were two young men sodomizing 14 boys with foreign objects, a clear power play by stronger males tyrannizing and abusing more vulnerable males in their care at a summer camp. In Coconino County it was one hapless, confused male videotaping men and boys urinating in rows of urinals at a mall restroom.

While both crimes were clearly homosexual, they were profoundly different. The two young men who were sodomizing boys were clearly predatory. The hapless young man in Coconino County was a lone voyeur. In Yavapai County the sociopathic predators, Clifton Bennett and Kyle Wheeler, are having most of their crimes set aside and prosecuted on only one and two crimes and that only as misdemeanors. The sorrow is that with predatory crimes there are victims who’ve suffered and been harmed by the predators. In voyeurism no one is physically harmed, especially in the case of one man watching other men and boys urinating.

Why would predatory homosexual crimes in Yavapai County be discounted with minimum punishment while voyeuristic homosexual crimes in Coconino County be seriously dealt with and punished? The County Attorney in Yavapai County, Sheila Polk, and her allies apparently cannot entertain the possibility that predatory homosexual sodomy is a crime because homosexuality in itself in her eyes is so unnatural that it cannot be acknowledged and is beyond the limits of the law. She had to call homosexual crimes something else, like hazing. Apparently, Terrence C. Hance, the Coconino County Attorney, believes that everyone, heterosexual or homosexual, as a human being merits the protection of the law. This is a lesson for all of Arizona. We are all God’s children.