If anyone ever wanted to know what gets my blood boiling to critical levels, it's when someone justifies the worst kinds of abuse to a child. I try to be an open-minded individual, though I recognize my own flaws at being consistently open-minded, which reminds me to always give some room in my mind to what someone proposes or argues, especially when it involves absolutes, like "A equals B, B equals C, therefore A equals C," etc. But I will admit to one absolute in political discourse that I unequivocally and uncompromisingly believe in regardless of what anyone may drum up to the contrary: sexual abuse of a child is always, always evil and completely unacceptable in every single context, every single one.

Roman Polanski sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in 1977, and there are actually people signing petitions for his release from extradition.

No, he really did sexually assault this girl. This isn't some kind of mistake that people are claiming happened to this poor man. The evidence was taken and catalogued and used in a court trial: they found semen on the girl's underwear the day after the assault, naked photographs of her he had taken, and Quaalude pills in his house. After the victim testified, Polanski was indicted for:

• furnishing a controlled substance to a minor
• committing a lewd or lascivious act upon a child under 14
• unlawful sexual intercourse
• rape by use of drugs
• perversion (oral copulation)
• sodomy

Court records indicate that the parents of the victim wanted to spare the girl the trauma of testifying in a criminal trial, which prompted them to work out a plea deal in which Polanski would plead guilty to one charge: unlawful sexual intercourse. His lawyers then managed a tricky maneuver where they got Polanski psychologically evaluated as part of the pre-sentencing procedures. This evaluation was ordered by the judge to last 90 days. They finished the evaluation in 42 days and Polanski posted bail. The judge got wind of this and tried to apply the brakes, signaling the possibility that he could sentence Polanski with the worst prison time possible for the crime. At this, Polanski fled to France.

France made sense: though his parents were Polish, he was born in France prior to their moving back to Poland just before Nazi Germany overran the country, and there he could escape extradition charges as a natural citizen of the country. He has remained in France until last week, safe from extradition to the U.S. to face his due sentence.

Now, some are calling for his release from a Genevan prison where he awaits the extradition process thirty years after his crime, many of them film industry colleagues like Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. Polanski has had enough grief in his life, they say, because he lost his mother to the atrocities of Auschwitz and his wife was murdered by Charles Manson's family. Surprisingly, but not totally surprising, the victim herself has asked that L.A. County drop the charges, because the more this goes on, the more of a spectacle this poor woman becomes in the mass media; she just wants her right to privacy, for goodness' sake.

Can this be real? This qualifies for me as some of the most barbaric reasoning I have ever heard. Reminds me of some of the logic you hear when a soldier at war snaps and commits murder. "Well, he had endured so much atrocity..." Inexcusable. This was a child who was afraid of him. Regardless of the adult victim wanting her peace of mind, what kind of precedent does this set in our society to relativize children's rights? It's not enough that he drugged her, took all her clothes off, photographed her naked, began to have intercourse with her, realized it was unprotected so proceeded to commit sodomy on her, on a 13-year-old? How on earth can rational human beings relativize this?

I've felt for quite a while that Hollywood's morals had hit rock bottom and that their role as social commentators should be criticized and ignored. At least with this controversy (why is it controversial?) true colors emerge in bold relief. It's no mystery to me any longer exactly who perverts social experience on the screen, when they stand in solidarity in favor of a convincingly convicted child-rapist. You won't find me supporting Scorsese or any of the rest of those petition signers unless they reverse course.