Weblog Sin Pies

Charley Daniels

Frsno Bee: SoCal court reinstates ‘men only’ sex charge against woman

An appeals court reinstated a charge of indecent exposure against a woman who disrobed in front of a 14-year-old boy.

The three-member panel overturned a ruling by Riverside County Superior Court Judge Robert W. Armstrong, who had dismissed charges against Alexis Luz Garcia last year, ruling that the law making it a misdemeanor for someone to expose “his person” didn’t apply to women.

The gist is the kid was being noisy, the neighbor punished him by exposing herself. There are a lot of great things happening here. Interestingly, the funniest part to me isn’t that she considers the sight of her naked body a punishment. That’s actually quite sad. What I’m most curious about is that there’s a person somewhere whom we have entrusted to uphold the law of the land, and the dude thinks indecent exposure applies only to men.

Prosecutors said the boy’s parents called police after the woman threatened to disrobe every time the boy played basketball.

And Riverside County Superior Court Judge Robert W. Armstrong dismissed the case. Why? No penises involved. Makes sense, right? Considerations: Is this his way of protesting the lack of a gender-neutral third-person pronoun in English? Is he one of these straight-as-an-arrow dudes who finds female nudity beautiful but male nudity immoral? Is he some sort of smart ass?

Luckily the appeals court has more sense. Well, maybe not, but at least they read the whole law before issuing a decision:

In a ruling issued Aug. 28, the appeals panel noted that another section of state law says that “words used in the masculine gender include the feminine and neuter.”

“We can find no logical or reasonable basis for concluding women are incapable of committing the crime of indecent exposure,” the panel wrote in its 13-page decision.

Judge Armstrong must have skimmed over that section.