This newspaper article spells it out bluntly:
Title, in case the link preview isn’t working: Cheney primary challenger impregnated 14-year-old when he was 18
The reason for pitting him should be pretty obvious. But I also want to pit everyone who votes for him in the primary against Liz Cheney. I wonder what excuses his voters will come up to support him.
I can’t even feel the normal amount of anger and surprise. I guess it’s tranquil fury and exasperation.
PBS refused to name the mother, because she committed suicide shortly after they divorced when she was about 18 and he was about 21. This guy does not see his son “because of bad choices he’s made” which I’d bet you a good sum of money is that the son is gay.
No, according to “Cowboy State Daily”, “Bouchard’s son, Tony Raymond Bouchard, is currently imprisoned at the Bob Wiley Detention Facility in Visalia, California, on multiple convictions, including sodomy by use of force, sexual penetration by foreign object and false imprisonment by violence. He has been incarcerated since 2018.”
It would have been more honest to include his full statement about his son:
…Sadly, he’s made some wrong choices in his life,” the senator said. “I certainly don’t approve of them, but I’m not going to abandon him. I still love him.”…
Pit Bouchard for his politics but I’m not a fan of going back 40(?) years to find something like this. He married the girl (which was a disaster) so he appeared to try and own up to his mistakes.
Now, if he got a 14-year-old pregnant ten years ago…fire away.
I’m waiting for him to own up to statutory rape. I hope there’s no statute of limitations on that.
Right, just like the Bible says you should do when you rape another man’s property without his consent. Marry it.
Even if you’re willing to forgive his actions from 40 years ago, his present-day defense of them is pretty stomach turning: "She was a little younger than me, so it’s like the Romeo and Juliet story.”
See, it sounds more like he groomed a child (she would have been in 8th grade, Maybe early 9th grade, and he was a senior in high school or graduated) knocked her up, abandoned her, and then she spiraled into depression and suicide. His son ended up in prison. Did he raise that boy? Did he serve as a father to him? Does he take any responsibility for what happened? He blamed her father for the suicide. He blamed his son for “his own choices”.
I’m sorry. He hasn’t begun to explain this in a way that would make it palatable. There could be a redemption story here: I was young, I was in love, I fucked up, I got scared, I ran, I didn’t take responsibility then and I ruined lives and I am so, so sorry. I’ve dedicated my life to public service to help others the way I couldn’t help my family. He’s not telling that story. He’s framing it as two dumb kids making an error, and him at the upstanding, scared young man trying to make it right, but helpless because she was clearly a trashy troubled girl and the son a bad seed.
18 and 14, dude. Best case scenario: high school senior knocking up a freshman during the first semester. She may well have been in 8th grade. And even now, he doesn’t seem to think it was evil or that his role was different than hers.
It was two kids making a dumb error; the outrage here is largely because he’s a Trumpist. At 18 I dated a girl who was 14; I was immature and she was very mature so it worked for a bit. Thankfully I wasn’t quite dumb enough to get her pregnant.
Bouchard married her so he didn’t abandon her, at least not at first. Most of us would probably agree that getting married was the wrong way to “fix” the problem.
If some new information comes out I’ll reassess but for now I’ll concentrate on opposing his politics.
If you had sex with her, that was exploitative. If doesn’t matter if you were "immature. " a 14 year old is a child.
If he weren’t running for public office and holding himself up as some sort of paragon of virtue when it comes to family values, I’d be more open to this line of thinking.
Is it statutory rape? That is, did he actually violate a statute by having sex with a 14 year old when he was 18, or was that considered legal at the time and place.
Note that I’m not arguing that “legal” means it was “okay,” I’m just wondering if there was an actual law broken here, or is this would have been covered under one of those “Romeo and Juliet” laws.
Back in the early 80s most states did not have R&J laws, but also at the time in many if not most the “do the right thing” deal, either explicit in the books or implicit in court’s discretion, was still expected to give legal support to Daddy’s shotgun. Marry her or get accused of the statutory offense.
As to presenting as a paragon of family values… I suspect the Trumpetista movement stopped caring about whether that was true or not a while ago…
I don’t really know how to research old Florida Romeo & Juliet laws.
I’ve heard this one before. Not in a good way. If any Democrat did the same thing I hope they get tossed.
My best friend in high school dated a 15 yo freshman boy when she was an 18 yo senior. And another friend dated an 8th grader when she was a junior. These boys already had dating experience at that time. I can accept a 4 year age gap in most young couples. I say focus on his lack of qualifications rather than his tragic high school experience.
I’m pretty sure that even “Romeo and Juliet” laws in Florida don’t prevent you from being punished. They are intended to ensure that that punishment doesn’t follow you around for life as far as things like the sex offender registry. You still broke the law.
Does “dating” equal sex? I dated two girls and high school without having sex with them. One relationship was over a year long.
Dating a 14 year old is one thing. Have sex with her is quite another.
Even in the pit, I figured being “pretty sure” wasn’t sufficient, so I did some digging.
Florida’s “Romeo and Juliet” law does not make it legal for an 18 year-old to have a sexual relationship with a 15 year-old; however, it does provide a mechanism for the offender to petition or make a motion to the court to remove the requirement to register as a sexual offender if certain criteria are met.
Ymmv, but yeah their dating included sexual activities.