Many teens ignorant about sex laws

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Many Teens Don't Know the Law About Sex

ATLANTA (AP) — The tough Georgia law that sent Genarlow Wilson to prison for having oral sex with a fellow teenager has been watered down. But in Georgia — and in many other states — it's still a crime for teenagers to have sex, even if they're close in age.

Legal experts say it's rare for prosecutors to seek charges. But, as the Wilson case illustrates, they can and sometimes do.

And the rising popularity of sex offender registries can often mean that a teen nabbed for nonviolent contact with someone a year or two younger might face the same public stigma as a dangerous sexual predator.

"It's ludicrous," Wilson's lawyer B.J. Bernstein said. "In order to look tough on crime they (lawmakers) are criminalizing teen sex."

Wilson was freed Friday after the Georgia Supreme Court found that the 10-year mandatory sentence he received for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a New Year's Eve party in 2003 when he was 17 was cruel and unusual punishment. He had served almost three years in prison.

Georgia's law has since been rewritten to make the same act a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison.

Across the country, ages of consent range from 14 to 18.

Lawyers and health educators say most teens — and even many parents — are unaware that even consensual teenage sex is often a crime. The patchwork of laws and ages from state to state leaves many confused and critics say more education is badly needed.

"We do a disgraceful job of educating kids about the very real consequences that they face," said J. Tom Morgan, a former DeKalb County district attorney who has a new book coming out called "Ignorance Is No Defense: A Teenagers Guide to Georgia Law."

"If society is going to punish them as adults," said Morgan, "then society ought to educate them."

What schools teach in sex-education classes varies from district to district, but Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, said those that receive federal funds for abstinence-from-sex education programs are encouraged to teach age of consent laws as part of their classes.

Trudy Higgins-Edison is one such teacher. She began asking a police officer to teach a class on sex and the law to high schoolers at her Sugar Land, Texas, school two years ago. She said it's probably her most popular class.

"The kids are really engaged and ask a lot of questions," Higgins-Edison said. "And most of them are completely amazed that they could actually be arrested."

Some states have moved in recent months to craft so-called Romeo and Juliet exceptions to prevent sexually active teenagers from being lumped together with child molesters.

Indiana changed its law so that teens in "dating relationships" would not be prosecuted. Exactly what that means is unclear, said Larry Landis, executive director of the Indiana Public Defender Council.

"I think there is a view now that 'hey, maybe we overdid it on the sex offender registry,'" Landis said.

Connecticut changed its law to stop prosecuting teens if the age gap is three years or less. And Texas has changed the way it classifies sex offenders so that some low-risk teens will no longer have to register.

Wilson said in an interview Monday that he hopes to use his newfound celebrity to raise awareness among high school and college students. He said sex education classes are lacking.

"Most of the time they just tell kids, 'Use condoms,'" Wilson told The Associated Press

"That's not the only thing they need to know about sex. They need to know that they can actually go to jail."

Wilson will appear on behalf of an organization set up by his lawyer to help teens learn their rights.

[Master of Cards]

I can say from my school, this is very true.

[Mayabird]

From my experience in the state of Georgia, all we were told about sex is that it's EVIL and BAD and WRONG and birth control doesn't work and we'll all go to hell if we don't get married before screwing, and also that when you're a virgin, you're like a rose with all your petals, but every time you have sex it's like removing one of the petals, and then you're all ruined and awful and nasty and bad; that's why you have to be married, because only when someone is stuck to you by law will they tolerate you being all ruined and impure inside because of sex.

I am totally not joking about any of that. They might have said something about going to jail, but it was all mixed up in the part about sex being TOTALLY EVIL and that's why you go to jail for it.

[Shinova]

Which makes them want to do it more, of course.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Mayabird and Shinova, I seriously have my doubts about that being in any way accidental. Watch George Carlin's thoughts on the matter.

[Stark]

From my experience in the state of Georgia, all we were told about sex is that it's EVIL and BAD and WRONG and birth control doesn't work and we'll all go to hell if we don't get married before screwing, and also that when you're a virgin, you're like a rose with all your petals, but every time you have sex it's like removing one of the petals, and then you're all ruined and awful and nasty and bad; that's why you have to be married, because only when someone is stuck to you by law will they tolerate you being all ruined and impure inside because of sex.

I am totally not joking about any of that. They might have said something about going to jail, but it was all mixed up in the part about sex being TOTALLY EVIL and that's why you go to jail for it.

Sometimes I wonder where psychosexual guilt issues come from. That's fucked up.

[Mayabird]

Re: Shinova, Einy, and Stark.

Not only does abstinence-only sex ed totally backfire by making teens somehow even more likely than normal to have sex (although there could be additional factors at work, such as the environment that allows such "education" to occur in the first place) but it also loads on the guilt, as Stark mentioned. They do it, then feel very bad about it afterwards.

Einy, I'm not entirely sure how much of the plot is intentional and how much is memetic evolution (which is kinda like real biology evolution, except not really). For instance, evangelical schools these days don't teach much theology at all. If you want to become a Southern Baptist preacher, for instance, you barely take any classes about the Bible at all. What you learn is showmanship and salesmanship, basically how to become a used car dealer of the Bible. Actually studying theology is one of the faster ways of getting people to lose faith. Whether the current state of their educating is a result of intentionally phasing out religious studies to keep them from questioning their faith, or because the actual religious students all left and the only ones left are the salesmen who believe because all they hear is their pitch all day and night (kinda like natural selection, except not really), I don't know.

This process of abstinence-only guilt serves to keep the students mired down and in line with their beliefs. That the teen girls usually get pregnant and then have to live in squalor, bringing up the next generation of potential recruits that are highly sensitive to this kind of crap, may just be a bonus to them. They do have their strongest base in the lower-class poor, after all.

So it's hard for me to say where this all started and how much is actually intentional and how much just happened because it works for the people who want it to work. But it works, and it is very fucked up.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

The nice thing is that merely by talking about it here and on the broader Internet, we help throw a gigantic wrench into the works. However, that requires far more broadband penetration to work; something that actually has some hope of getting fixed.

Yes, broadband is now a weapon against conservative fucktardism.