Naturally, some will argue that such a double standard has been rendered outmoded owing to advances in contraception. In which case, pregnancy being our only concern, no one will mind older men having sex with a young girls so long as some form of contraception is used or the man’s had a vasectomy. The only thing that should be against the law, if anything, should be the failure to use contraceptive devices.

Note that our society has punished homosexual behavior more so than heterosexual behavior because we are a homophobic society… By rights, there would be no laws governing homosexual behavior if preventing pregnancy was the only concern of the law. Likewise, we punish boys more severely than girls for the same behavior because we are an androphobic society. If we didn’t fear male sexuality as something more predatory than female sexuality, we wouldn’t imprison teenage boys for having sex with teenage girls. If, on the other hand, preventing teenage pregnancy was our only concern, we would jail promiscuous teenage females as well as their teenage boy friends. It takes two to tango. Why only blame the boys? We might as well send a message to the girls as well. Recently, “more liberal” states have decided criminalizing teenage boys for having sex with teenage girls is a bit stupid in light of changing moral standards. These states have made teenage sex a less criminal offense so long as their ages are not too far apart.

Nevertheless, let us assume the bane of pregnancy is largely immaterial to society and a single standard of all permissive sexual freedom shall take its place for men, women, boys, and girls. Let us assume, as the late Norman Mailer so eloquently put it, ” … all hierarchies of moral precedence bombarded, all eschatologies withdrawn … the argument will go beyond that foreseeable future time when monogamy and legitimacy will be gone, when distinctions between heterosexuality will be gone, adolescent sexuality and extramarital sexuality all gone — all part of that huge revolutionary statement that all fucking high or low, by any hole or pit, is pleasure, and pleasure is the first sweetmeat of reason.” As might be expected, Mailer was speaking to the suggestions of the so called “radical” feminist Kate Millett, “A sexual revolution would require, perhaps most of all, an end to traditional sexual inhibitions and taboos, particularly those that threaten patriarchal monogamous marriage: homosexuality, “illegitimacy,” adolescent, pre- and extra-marital sexuality.”

I must say that Kate could sound rather reasonable at times, even if I can’t see an inveterate connection between patriarchy and monogamous marriage. Whatever. The case has been made that all double standards are rooted in archaic fears. One might only suggest that sex between an older woman and a boy is less criminal than sex between an older man and a girl because of woman’s innate fear of man. And that, my dear, is be something that has to be either denied or overcome.

These ideological points have also generated constitutional arguments, as gendered statutory rape laws implicate the standards and principles underlying the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Equal Protection argument was featured most prominently in the claims articulated by the petitioner in Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County, where a male juvenile accused of the statutory rape of a female peer challenged the state’s ability to prosecute him under the then-gendered California statute. Petitioner Michael M. alleged that the California statutory rape law unlawfully discriminated on the basis of gender because, when both the male and female sexual partners were younger than 18, it presumed that the male was the aggressor. This classification, he argued, perpetuated outdated notions of the customary roles of the sexes and reinforced stereotypes of women as helpless and naive and of men as sexual aggressors. Michael further asserted that the state’s purported justification for the statute, teenage pregnancy prevention, was a sham; he claimed that the teenage pregnancy rationale deflected attention from the statute’s actual purpose–to maintain sexual stereotypes.

Giving great deference to the State of California and to the Supreme Court of California in his plurality opinion, Chief Justice Rehnquist accepted as true the stated purpose of the gendered statute: to prevent teenage pregnancy. He then concluded that the State had a “strong interest” in preventing teenage pregnancy and that the interest was “sufficiently related to the State’s objectives to pass Constitutional muster.” In addition, the Court ruled acceptable a gender classification that was “not invidious, but rather realistically reflects the fact that the sexes are not similarly situated in certain circumstances.” The plurality accepted the California Supreme Court’s finding that young men and young women are not similarly situated with respect to the problems and risks of sexual intercourse, because only women can get pregnant and because women suffer the consequences of teenage pregnancy disproportionately to males. Thus, the United States Supreme Court claimed, the gendered statutory rape law did not discriminate on the basis of gender; it simply recognized that men and women are different and treated them as such.

In the years following Michael M.’s release, legal scholars condemned the Court’s decision and lobbied for the repeal of gendered laws. They criticized Chief Justice Rehnquist for “[accepting] the utterly dubious proposition put forward by the State of California that the purpose of the statutory rape statute was to prevent teenage pregnancies[ ].” Critics further argued that statutory rape laws are based on “stereotypes concerning male sexual aggression and female sexual passivity, despite Chief Justice Rehnquist’s express denial of that possibility.” They contended that gender stereotypes animated the Court’s approval of such statutes. For example, in describing the opinion of the lower court, Chief Justice Rehnquist noted that “males alone can physiologically cause the result which the law properly seeks to avoid (i.e. pregnancy)” and that “gender classification was readily justified as a means of identifying the offender and the victim.” According to Wendy Williams, the first statement is based on a sexist biological concept that women are not necessary for conception, but serve only as incubators. The second statement–that criminalizing only men properly identifies perpetrators–implies that only men can be statutory rapists and only women can be victims. (62) Nothing about this construction is inherent in the concept of “sexual intercourse with a minor”; it results only from the statute’s gender-specific terms (the same terms that allegedly violate the Equal Protection Clause).

Overall, scholars have argued that the Court’s decision in Michael M. was not only circular but also dangerous. Williams viewed Michael M. as evidence that society’s quest for gender equality had hit a brick wall of culture, that deeply-embedded cultural notions of what is quintessentially male and female will not yield to constitutional requirements. James McCollum echoed this concept, although he optimistically noted that the Michael M. decision was only a “temporary road block towards alienating unnecessary gender discrimination.” By refusing to acknowledge the sexist implications in gendered statutory rape laws, and by upholding the law in spite of these implications, the Supreme Court implicitly “sanctioned the subtle gender discrimination which exists in our culture.”

That itself indicates a typical problem of the sort of disregard that is experienced by men when they state a truth. You didn’t decribe the kind of laugh you made but I can imagine many similar reactions by women to that particular ’script writer’s line’, ranging from simple disbelief, assumption that he was being insolent, total affront, incredulity, etc. All driven by an underlying prejudice.

You put the issue in relief by indicating a large age gap, but of course the defining feature is the girl’s age not the man’s. He could be just a few years older – running right into the jaws of that other feminine/feminist mantra about girls maturing so much earlier than boys. A precociously mature 15 y/o girl who initiates and controls a sexual encounter can it seems be raped by an immature 17 y/o boy who hasn’t the skills (nor perhaps inclination) to extricate himself from her engineered situation.

And underpinning all such instances is the assumption that you retain and profer that a girl ‘goes along’ with sex, not because she has a lust-drive of her own but merely to keep a ‘relationship’ and its attendant attention. Only his lust-drive is acknowleged – racheted up of course, in direct opposite to her’s being denied out of the courtroom door. ‘Going along with it’ is almost expected of her – and her excuse. No one thinks about a boy ‘going along with it’ because of similar expectations loaded onto him. They are discounted. He has to be seen as an initiator and a driver, even when following the script laid down by those very people who like a good self-fulfilling prophesy.

So, when the man “does the right thing” and stays to raise the child the law decides to go after him.

When the man no longer remains, the girl is rewarded.

Can there be any clearer picture of “kick dad to the curb” policy from big daddy government.

It is my educated opinion, and that of the experts, that sex offender laws as they are written today,“Do More Harm than Good.” These laws actually endanger children and society.

Megans Law and the Residence restrictions do not protect the children as these regulations intended. They actually make matters worse by creating itinerant predators.

Let me explain,
Incest and friends of the family make up approximately 98% of all sex offenses. There has been estimated that 60 million individuals in this country that has experienced child sexual abuse. 50%, 30 million will go on to abuse a child. This is the crux of the problem, and we are NOT addressing it.

Instead, law makers are creating laws that Do More harm than good. For example,

The public registries. 98% of those come from the family and friends of the family. It is a fact, that once caught, that 95% of them NEVER EVER repeat another sex crime. And that without therapy.

The remaining 5% are HIDING in the registries. Those who DID NOT know their victims, the VIOLENT rapists and the REPEAT offender.

AND, approximately, 95% of all new sex offenses are committed by individuals NOT on the registries. Is it no wonder, because law makers have totally ignored the fact that Incest and friends of the family are the crux of the problem. There are 30 million abusers out there and lawmakers have done NOTHING to address PREVENTION through EDUCATION.

By ignoring incest and friends of the family, law makers have created a GREATER RISK to children and society. If we do not openly discuss it, do not propose any educational models to better inform ourselves and keep ourselves afflicted with guilt and shame which washes over all concerned, perpetrators, victims, and other family members alike, we all help shield and perpetuate the crime.

These sex offender laws are being passed without advice of the EXPERTS. They are knee jerk regulatory reaction which is just another way of saying, additional punishment is justified. Congress and the house have ignored the experts in the field. But when it comes to light bulbs, they clamor for expert testimony. There is something very fundamentally wrong with their approach when it comes to sex offender laws.

Randy Lopp, treatment subcommittee chairman of the Oklahoma Sex Offender Management Team said,”Most people who know anything about this are frustrated. It is just not helpful — the laws as they are now,”

”I think if the general public understood the RESEARCH, they would be willing to back the legislators to change the laws to make more sense and to protect children, because the laws as they are written are not protecting children,” he said. “They are doing more harm than good.”

Our own

US Department of Justice, 2003
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/rsorp9...
• Sample size – 9,700 sex offenders
• Length of time – 3 years
• Re-offense trigger – reconviction (Doesn’t mean a new sex crime)
• Results – 5.3% sexual offence. 3.3% child molestation.

Arizona, Department of Corrections, 2006
http://www.azcorrections.gov/FACTSHEETS/Fact%...
• Length of time – Ten years
• Sample size – 2,444 sex offenders
• Results – 3.2% returned for a new felony sex offense, 1.4% returned for a new felony case of child molestation
• Reoffense trigger – new conviction (Any conviction)

And there are many more studies and they have the same results. LOW recidivism rates for first time sex offenses.

Law makers pass these laws as non-controversial . Without debate and there is nothing I can think of that is more controversial.

Constitutional rights are being side stepped and it has been said that when you deny the constitution to one, you deny it to EVERYONE.
Please, look at the REAL problem. Incest and friends of the family and Prevent through education. Do away with these draconian laws that protect no one but endangers every child.
http://www.cfcoklahoma.org