Quite possibly, yes. It’s also useful to remember that in various media, Senator Kelly (and in the role of Principal Kelly in X-Men Evolution) is often shown as a reasonable man with a different point of view. Not always, in the same vein that Magneto tends to go back and forth between sympathetic villain and complete madman depending on the whim of the current editorial staff. More to the point, you cannot claim he wrong. There were dangerous, murderous mutants with no regard for humans life and with the ability and willingness to cause immense destruction, simply because it was easy. In the 2000 movie, there’s a nontrivial chance Magneto would have killed ten million people with his little toy, not to mention murdering a noticeable chunk of the world’s diplomatic corps. In the comics, Magneto has come close to doing the same on multiple occasions.
This is also the recent desire of the movies to treat it as a racial/ethnic/gay symbol of something is a serious weak point. We have nothing like this in human history. Some mutants are potentially capable of destroying the world - solo. Heck, even the more powerful non-mutant heroes in the Avengers and so on are not usually portrayed in that light. Tony Stark, as a villain, could do a lot of damage. But he’s not a Global Extinction Event threat. Magneto? Yes. Professor X? Yes. Phoenix? Yes. Apocalypse? Yes.
Even if they intend to be good guys who use their abilities responsibly, mutants have frequently been depicted as careless, destructive and apathetic about their impact on others, precisely because their powers are simply innate. They never really were ‘normal’ and so they assume they have a right to use their powers. Whereas many other superheroes had to learn discipline and/or understand what it’s like to just be one of the crowd, even if (in the case of Tony Stark) that’s the relatively slender crowd of genius billionaire playboys.
The problem is that the writing and editorial staff are, to be utterly frank, grossly too immature to really consider the implications of any of it. it sounds bad, therefore it must be evil, and anyone who agrees must be evil. It’s childish logic, but nobody ever said comic book writers were a particularly mature lot. At best, they sometimes raise interesting questions and write interesting Sci Fi. They are not collectively known for doing so very well. It’s more annoying in Marvel because they insisted on having so many mutants, and on treating them completely different than the many other superheroes. The recent-ish Civil War storyline was a particularly obnoxious example, with writers inserting dividing up and then having evil things the “other side” did. But it was mostly anti-registration to a ridiculous degree.
Now, don’t mistake me for saying I’m automatically in favor a Superhuman Registration Act, should we ever have a few sitting around. But I do think we would need to consider very carefully the impact of superhumans on society, as well as the impact of society on superhumans. You do not “fix” the problem by ignoring it - and you definitely do not fix it by remaining ignorant of it. This was something I really liked in X-Men (2000). Senator Kelly’s clearest demand? He wanted to know what the heck mutants could do. And that’s neither unreasonable nor evil. In fact, we see that a high-level national bureaucracy actually came about by the time of the third film and was actually handled very well although it got limited screentime. A blatant mutant was a high-ranking government official and mutant criminals were treated as dangerous prisoners. Yet, even though the government had the ability to do so, it didn’t remove their super-powers. It was willing to use extreme measures if forced by violent action, not otherwise.
And this is the ultimate hypocrisy. Mutants (and other superheroes) are often treated by writers as being special. They are given license to do almost anything with no repercussions. They are not answerable to “normal” people. If a supervillain causes a problem, only other superpeople can handle it. The X-Men, for instance, break an awful lot of laws, but there’s never any hint that they should be expected to pay for that. They are allowed to be “normal” when they want or be “super” when they please. And Mystique, for all the fact that she’s at least honest about, is also a complete hypocrite. (At least in the 2000 movie. She’s a monster in multiple other ways in the comics.) She claims that she shouldn’t “have” to hide her abilities. Fair enough. But she also claims the right to kill for convenience. In short, she is the reason people are afraid of her, and wants to flaunt how superspecialawesome she is while also demanding people treat her as “normal” in whatever ways her whim happens to be. Kinda like Oprah Winfry.
It’s one reason I like the Avengers or the Justice League more as I’ve gotten older. While these teams are not precisely public and many members hjave secret identities, they also have clear lines they cannot cross and may face sanctions if they do. They may not be under the thumb of a single government, but they’re also usually careful about interfering with governments. Sure - the lines get blurred when a supervillain is also a head-of-state or has a government protecting them. But in general, these groups beat up villains and turn them over to civilians (or quasi-military groups that specialize at incarcerating supervillains). They often let government departments know what’s going on. Quite frankly, the X-Men and other similar groups do whatever the hell they please and then complain if somebody else gets in the way of them.
Heck, even Batman works as closely as he can manage with the cops, even when the cops are portrayed as dangerously corrupt. When was the last time the X-Men called the police to warn them and coordinate a response?
