For various personal and ideological reasons, I have avoiding signing on to rabbinic positions or statements for several years. I recently made an exception to join over 150 Jewish leaders in signing a petition supporting the Child Victims Act (CVA) which according to its summary, “Eliminates statute of limitations in criminal and civil actions and revives civil actions for certain sex offenses committed against a child less than eighteen years of age.”

Reasons in favor of supporting this bill should be obvious and others can do so more eloquently and persuasively than I can. What I would like to address today revolves around the subsequent discussions over the potentially negative unintended consequences of this legislation, they may provide useful insights regarding religious rhetoric for political activism.