Sexual Insanity

August 2005

Earlier this year, the Boston media went berserk reporting on a case involving a 15-year-old female student giving blowjobs to five members of her high school’s hockey team (ages 15 to 18) in the boy’s locker room on multiple occasions. No force or coercion was ever alleged, no one involved ever complained, yet all the boys were charged with child rape. They faced lifetime registration as sexually dangerous persons meaning each would have to notify all future employers and neighbors that he was a convicted child rapist. Under laws now being drafted by Massachusetts (and likely to be passed), the convicted teens would also endure lifetime probation with their every movement tracked by satellites.

How outrageously insane. That such punishments could even be contemplated demonstrates how dangerously sexphobic our culture remains. A less crazed culture would recognize that adolescent sexuality is as natural as rain. Rational parents and school administrators would be pleased that the teens had chosen activities with greatly reduced pregnancy and disease risk. Real feminists would demand that the girl involved be free to make her own choices and not have her clear consent ignored, to be forever by labeled a “victim” and used as pawn in puritanical adults’ political crusades.

But almost no such voices of sensibility have been heard. Public debate predictably ranged from “they should all be locked away forever” to “perhaps prison isn’t the answer, but a horrible event occurred and severe punishment is warranted.”

No one stated an obvious alternate interpretation: “Wow, that sounds hot! I wish I had had that happen to me when I was in high school.” No one seemed to think it possible that everyone directly involved may have enjoyed every minute of the activity. No one could imagine that high school sex hijinx can make for cherished lifetime memories. Instead, all parents, administrators, police, and prosecutors professed their belief that terrible wickedness had already occurred, and even worse danger was narrowly averted by swift intervention and punishment.

As it turned out, the boys got “only” two years probation and court-ordered community service and counseling. Although even this punishment is unwarranted, it could have been worse: the teens could have been enjoying homosex.

It is a certainty that had the high school hockey team been discovered getting sucked off by a 15-year-old boy, prosecutors would not have offered the same “lenient” deal. They would have pressured the youthful fellator, probably eager not to be thought a fag who would voluntarily suck guys off, into alleging he was forcibly raped, and all his “attackers” would be in prison today.

In fact, some states explicitly permit hetero teen sex while reserving Draconian punishments for same-sex teens of the exact same ages performing the exact same acts. For doing far less than the Massachusetts hockey players, Kansas’s Matthew Limon, for example, was sentenced in 2000 to 17 years for oral sex with a fellow teen student.

Many like to imagine that we have made tremendous progress towards more enlightened sexual values. And indeed, the last few decades have seen a welcome retreat of much overt anti-gay sentiment. But reactionary elements in society, upset at having to tolerate greater adult sexual freedom, have redoubled their futile and destructive efforts to “protect” teens from sex, especially from homosexual contamination.

Watching prosecutors all over the country destroy teenagers’ lives with absurd sex charges underscores how sex phobia still bedevils our culture. Let us work for the day when teen blowjobs do not trigger court cases and front page news, but instead are cause for personal celebration and a source of pleasant memories.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=BF69B963-E8FC-437E-A75DA14EAED015A9>