Rethinking "Sex Offenses"

According to the definition of sex offender used in the Florida case of the young woman, Kaitlyn Hunt, having a consensual relationship with another young woman, my boyfriend when I was sixteen, would have been seen as sex offender.  He was a 19 year old college student, when I was in between my sophomore and junior years of high school.

He was a very kind, gentle young man. He never "took advantage" of me; in fact, we never did anything I didn't do the next year with a boy my own age. His friend, also a 19 year old college student, dated my friend from high school.

This did not seem wrong or in any way weird.

So imagine my shock when I read about the 18 year old girl now facing felony prosecution for having a 15 year old girlfriend. And the best her lawyer thinks she can do is get it reduced to a misdemeanor, which would at least spare the young woman the lifelong humiliation and loss of liberty of being labeled a sex offender.  Even that will force her on probation, into counseling and never to see her girlfriend again, at least until she turns 18 herself.

The latest news is she will not take the deal but will courageously fight the charges in court. Go Kaitlyn!

What nonsense! There is something wrong with a society that lumps consensual teenage relationships into the same category as rapists and pedophiles.  Let's be real.  Lots of young men and women have girl or boy friends younger than themselves. If the girl in question was 17, no problem, but crossing that mythical line into "adulthood" has made her into a predator. Never mind the relationship was consensual. Never mind her parents had no problems with it. (The other girl's parents did, and that's all it takes.)

Now a teenager is labeled a victim and another one is labeled a sex-offender. Wrong wrong wrong.

It should not be assumed just because you are under 18, you are powerless to control yourself and your body, that you are nothing but prey.  Last year you two could date and this year, you cannot.

The prosecutors in this case are hellbent for blood.   They seem to want to make an example of the 18 year old, a pariah of the 15 year old. Could their being two females have anything to do with it?

When we talk about sex offenders, let's get our priorities straight.  (Urinating in public can be seen as sex offense requiring registration.)

And all sex offenders, whether their crime involved children or not, are forced into exile, because they cannot live within some ridiculous distance from a school or playground.  That leaves many homeless, camping in the woods, moving to Montana with the cows (Watch out cows!)

In this case, a petition has been started through Change,org asking to free Kaitlyn.  There are currently 168,357 names on it and growing.