When a child whines, “Why can’t I?” quite often the answer is, “because you are not old enough.” However, in the soon to be released, “Harmful to Minors”, written by Judith Levine, a childless author with a half-baked idea, reportedly said children 12 to 16 years old are entitled to safe, satisfying sex lives. While Levine frowned on sexual relationships between youth and authority figures, she insisted there are positive aspects to consensual sex between pubescent teens and adults.
Has she not read any news story regarding the overall maturity of that particular age group? In the April 8 issue of U.S. News and World Report, it was reported that states which raised the age for independent driving saw significant decreases in teenage car accidents causing death or injury. North Carolina, alone, saw a 57 percent decline in such accidents by insisting teenagers drive with a licensed adult until they had had more time to mature.
Not old enough to drive a car without the supervision of older more experienced drivers, but – Levine stated, old enough to choose to have harmless, “beneficial” sexual relationships with adults.
“There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death,” the wiseman wrote in Proverbs 14:12. Levine thinks she is right but has she considered the death and disease resulting from this era of rapidly spreading of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS? Faced with the ardor and persuasiveness of a confident 28 year-old, how many 12 to 16 year-olds would think of, let alone, insist on a blood test before succumbing?
Not old enough to confront to prevent and/or protect themselves from STDs – but Levine said, old enough to choose to have a sexual relationship with someone who could infect them with a death sentence.
Besides STDs, headlines have long bewailed the troubling issue of children having children. Would Levine’s book have had a different conclusion, if her teenage affair with an adult had resulted in a child and the father refused to pay support without a court order?
Not old enough to have a healthy, welcomed pregnancy – but, Levine argued, old enough to choose to have sex – the primary vehicle for teenage pregnancy and poverty.
Especially belying the message of Levine’s book are the recent headlines regarding priests accused of sexual involvement with children. About 98 percent of the priests’ alleged victims were at least 12 years old.
“Not old enough to feel anything afterwards except used, abused and devastated,” hundreds have testified. But, “I was old enough to benefit from an affair with an adult,” one author asserts.
In light of the testimony of the hundreds, would anyone dare suggest that possibly Levine wrote hoping to rid herself of similar feelings by convincing adults to allow other children to join her in the abyss? Perhaps she finds it easier to justify it as an affair rather than face the agony that she was raped as a minor by a trusted adult.
One time a brash, young father told me he agreed with the few who advocated pushing the sexual envelope to include children. When he concluded with a cocky smile, I asked, “What if it were your daughter going off with some guy?” His smile dissolved into horror as he shed a layer of his cocky attitude. As a loving father he knew he would say, “You are not old enough to choose, and I am old enough to protect you by saying ‘No.’”
No matter how many books are written which say otherwise, that is the way it has been and the way it should continue to be.