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Statutory Rape Laws
MORALITY AND THE LAW XCII
By Stephen Ellis
THE MORALITY OF STATUTORY RAPE
It has been a year and a half since I wrote about the statutory age of consent, but no BLOG, before or since, has caused as much readership response. The recent event in Georgia that resulted in a young boy (Genarlow Wilson), age 17, being sentenced to ten years in prison for having consensual (oral) sex with a 15 year old girl has catapulted the subject back into the headlines. To me, it was bad enough to sentence the boy (also a minor) to 10 years in prison, but, shortly after he was sentenced, the Georgia State Legislature saw the foolishness of their statutory rape laws and changed the crime from a felony to a misdemeanor with a maximum of a 1 year sentence.
In the true spirit of Mike Nifong (the North Carolina D.A. who prosecuted the boys from Duke on a phony rape charge), the attorney general of Georgia, Thurbert Baker, refused to obey the court order to release Generalow Wilson (who had already served 4 years of his sentence), and is appealing the court order so Wilson can be kept in prison for 6 more years. I am constantly astonished by the extremely poor caliber of the men we elect to be our top law-enforcement officers in our cities, states and nationally.
All statutory rape laws on the books today are unenforceable! The rape laws were legislated without any consideration of reality. Saying that a girl must be 18 years of age to consent to sex is laughable. By age 18, more than 90% of all girls have been sexually active. There was a recent report out of Washington stating that 20% of all 4th grade girls have been sexually active. I’m not taking a position with regard to young people having sex. Since time began, they have been having sex, and putting some unenforceable laws on our books is not going to reduce the rush of hormones or physical pleasure seeking in children.
Consider our silly laws concerning sexual activity among children: In the United States, the uniform age of sexual consent prior to 1886 (a little more than a century ago) was 7 years old. That meant that a 7-year old could consent to sex. After 1886, the age of consent was raised to 10 in most states (Delaware stayed with the 7 year old standard).
Then, in the 1930s and 1940s, the religious “right” stepped in and got the states to pass laws that no girl under the age of 18 could consent to sex (21 in Montana). These laws were every bit as brainless as the laws giving a 7-year old the right to consent. Fortunately, most states (including Montana) have since modified their “age-of-consent” laws although even setting it at age 16 ignores the fact that more than 50% of children are sexually active by that age. Believe it or not, there are still 18 states that have laws against masturbation on their books.
The new age of consent laws created a lot of problems: a lot of kids have been sent to prison for “doing what comes naturally”. It has become common practice for the courts to send underage male participants to jail while treating their underage female participants as "victims". It has created a paranoia among male adults who, normally and naturally, want to be affectionate with children. Children like to be held and fondled in an affectionate and loving way, but now most men are afraid to even touch a niece or nephew, no less hug them or, playfully, toss them up, because someone will report them as a child molester.
Children are being deprived of a very important “closeness” with adults in growing up that may well affect their lives and relationships as adults. For some reason, the female’s testimony is always believed. There is a totally false concept in our courts that children (especially female children) don’t lie. This absurd belief has resulted in numerous good lives being permanently ruined (The McMartin Pre School Case), fathers being barred from seeing their children in divorce cases, even neighborhood squabbles will ridiculously allege child-abuse.
In ancient Greece and Rome, male children were used as sexual playthings even more than girls. It was expected that a young, male, apprentice would satisfy "all" of his master’s needs…just as the master had done for his master when he was a boy. That was the way things were. Read Socrates and you will find several times he mentions he would much prefer to have sex with a young boy than with a woman…even though Socrates had a wife and children. During that era it was common courtesy to provide your house guest with one of your children to share the guest’s bed to warm and satisfy his/her sexual needs. This was still practiced among the wealthy in Victorian England.
Our history books are full of political "marriages" of kings to young princesses, many from 3 to 9 years old.
Read your Bible: In the times of King Solomon, it was legal to sell any child over the age of 3 years and 1 day for sexual purposes. Many men took children into their homes to use for their own pleasure and to use as slaves and concubines ("marriage", as we know it today, did not exist). Among those men were rabbis, early evangelists, and assorted other holy men of various beliefs. This was a cultural norm and no one felt violated or damaged. Hard to imagine? The Old Testament tells us that Moses himself ordered his men to kill everyone in a village except the young girls, and his men could do anything they wanted to with them.
There are still any number of cultural societies in the world today who continue to allow their children to enjoy sex openly.
I strongly recommend any of my readers who are curious about the different laws in different states check out the information on http://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/olrdata/jud/rpt/2003-R-0376.htm
And remember, no matter what I write; no matter how foolish I believe some laws to be; my position is to uphold the laws until they are changed.
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As Abraham Lincoln is purported to have said, "the law is an ass." Statutory rape laws are about as stupid as split speed limits for cars and trucks. You wind up with traffic going at about 5 different rates of speed, resulting in taking your life in your hands e every time you get on the freeway. About 30% of the states have such nonsense. I'd be curious to know,Stephen, what motivated you to write on this subject. Sexuality is something that just isn't supposed to be discussed openly. And we all know that children and our parents, and especially our grandparents, don't do it. While I agree that children need to be protected from scumbag predators, who ought to be publicly hung, most young ladies over the age of about 10 know exactly what they're doing. I had to avoid making eye contact last weekend at a convention with one about the age of 13. She was making eyes at me. And I'm old enough to be her grandfather. It has become my considered opinion that God designed girls especially to be married young. That's why they get breasts and other functioning parts. And they ought to be married to somebody considerably older for a number of reasons. Otherwise it's like putting two crazy people together. And then it's like what Woody Hayes said about the forward pass: To wit: "4 things can happen and 3 are bad." I'm not so sure about boys. Can you honestly think of anything more useless than a 18 year old male? I used to be one once. Thanks for the blog.
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I agree that the statutory rape laws are nonsensical. However, I don't agree with how children were "used" historically. A child is still a child and it is our duty as responsible adults to protect the innocence of every child.
9/21/08 12:34 AM