You’re Accused: ‘Vengeance, Spite, Fear, Denial, Sadness, Insecurity, Whatever’

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‘LGBT Injustice’? Kaitlyn Hunt (center), her mother Kelley Hunt Smith (left)
and attorney Julia Graves (right) appear on MSNBC, May 22.

Did you ever read what I wrote about the gay-rights movement in 2008? There is an inherent problem in the language of “rights.” Once you adopt such rhetoric in a democratic polity, your purpose is to de-legitimize opposition: “Shut up, because equality.”

Good-bye, rule of law. Forget any question about the necessity or efficacy of any policy reform proposed by those who, speaking the language of “rights,” cast their opponents in the role of oppressors. Merely to disagree is to inflict social injustice on the victims.

This rhetoric succeeds in liberal culture because the triumphant narrative of Progress is something we are taught never to question.

“My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.”
— G.K. Chesteron, 1923

So, Ace finally took notice of the Kaitlyn Hunt story:

People who reflexively support gays will say “don’t prosecute her because you don’t prosecute straight kids in that situation and we have to do what we normally do. We can’t treat gay people worse.”
People who reflexively oppose gay stuff will say “you have to prosecute her because you routinely prosecute straight kids in that situation and we have to do what we normally do. We can’t treat gay people better.”
Well I agree with both final sentences — we cannot treat gay people better and we cannot treat gay people worse. Which means the first sentence of each claim is in contest– do we usually prosecute straight kids in this situation?
If so, we should prosecute her, just like the average kid. If not, we should not prosecute her, just like the average kid. As this all swings on a factual question I have no idea about, I didn’t weigh in.

Florida law is clear that anyone 18 or older having sex with someone 15 or younger has committed a crime. This crime is “usually” prosecuted for the same reason that Kate Hunt is being prosecuted: Parents of the minor victim discover that their young teenager is sexually involved with an adult, object to this involvement, and call the cops.

Will anyone argue that this law is unreasonable?

Is it wrong for parents to be empowered, with the law on their side, to say, “Hey, leave my kid alone, you creep, or I’ll call the cops”?

Let us stipulate that there are probably lots of 18- and 19-year-old guys who may be sexually interested in much younger teenage girls.

This is the typical scenario: A girl who is physically mature but not yet 16 becomes involved with a guy in his late teens or early 20s and this involvement is entirely voluntary — indeed, often quite enthusiastic — on the part of the girl who, in the eyes of the law, is the victim of a crime because she is incapable of legal consent.

Maybe that seems crazy to you. You may say, “But this girl is willing and eager to have sex at 14 or 15, why criminalize this guy, only four or five years older than her, for giving her what she wants?”

The answer is that this is a minor dependent upon, and under the authority of, her parents, who have a duty to supervise her behavior — to make sure she brushes her teeth and does her homework and looks both ways before crossing the street — for her own good. And if the parents of 14-year-old Heather Hotpants don’t want their daughter taking a ride on the one-eyed love monster with 19-year-old Billy the Boner, they are empowered by law to prevent it.

Maybe you think this kind of parental empowerment is a bad thing, but if you don’t have a teenage daughter, well, shut the hell up.

Parents have duties and parents have rights, and if we don’t want total sexual anarchy — horny hoodlums cruising the middle-school parking lot in search of some easy action — we’d better by God stand on the side of parents trying to protect their daughters.

Every year — every month, every week — guys are charged in Florida with violating this law. Most of the time you never hear about it, because it’s just a two-paragraph item in the cops-and-courts column of the local newspaper. The prosecutor offers the perp a plea bargain, the perp takes the deal, end of story.

This didn’t happen in the Kaitlyn Hunt case simply because her parents believed they could rally support on her behalf by claiming that Kate was a victim of homophobia, and so they launched the “Free Kate” campaign, fooled a lot of people into thinking that this was a case about “discrimination,” and rejected the plea bargain.

To such a gambit we must answer: Damn you, and damn your “rights.”

If you buy the argument pushed by the “Free Kate” crowd, anyone has a right to have sex with anyone of any age who will consent to it.

Pay attention to their rhetoric — and I’ve been following this story for three months — and you find a lot of talk about it being OK because both girl attended the same high school, or because they were “in love,” or because other kids are doing the same thing.

There has been talk about changing Florida law, and OK, so what?

In some states the age of consent is 14, and if the citizens of Florida wish to become Utah or Alabama, this 10th Amendment advocate would be obliged to respect their state sovereignty.

As it is, however, Florida’s age of consent is 16. This law is by no means secret and evidence in this case indicates that Kaitlyn Hunt knew damned well her involvement with a 14-year-old was illegal.

WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT ‘JAILBAIT’?

What first drew my attention to this case was a column at NewsBusters by Matthew Philbin in which he sagely observed that Kaitlyn Hunt and her supporters are trying to make homosexuality a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for statutory rape.  But if you cannot prosecute an 18-year-old lesbian for playing Spin the Dildo with a 14-year-old girl, by the same token you cannot punish 18-year-old gay guys who want to play naked leapfrog with 14-year-old boys, nor could any of the more commonplace heterosexual statutory rapes be punished.

The bottom line of the argument, really, would be tantamount to declaring “open season” on 14-year-olds in Florida.

Honestly, I wish Kaitlyn Hunt had taken the plea deal — like the vast majority of perps in such cases do — rather than subjecting America to this divisive debate, because she’s put me in the position of arguing now that she must go to prison, or else put at risk the legitimacy of age-of-consent laws everywhere. This was the import of my first American Spectator item about the case:

#FreeKate? Movement to Normalize
Pedophilia Finds Its Poster Girl

Folks, these “Free Kate” people have brought us so close to the gates of Hell here, you can feel the heat and smell the brimstone. Once these advocates of pubsecent perversion start talking about “rights,” and accusing their critics of “hate,” we could slide down the slippery slope faster than an Olympic bobsled team. Which brings us to the “Free Kate” supporter who inspired the headline of this post:

 

“If there weren’t ridiculous laws on the books that the other parents [i.e., the parents of the 14-year-old] pushed the state to utilize out of vengeance, spite, fear, denial, sadness, insanity, whatever they may have going on in their minds this would not be up for debate.”
— Carrie Mullinax

Damn you, and damn your accusations. Should parents who try to protect their daughters be exposed to this kind of insulting abuse?

Do you see how the rhetoric of “rights” empowers perverts and thugs to impugn the motives of law-abiding citizens? Laws against sex with 14-year-olds are “ridiculous,” and parents who want the state to enforce its laws are accused of “insanity”! Lesbians have a “right” to have sex with your 14-year-old daughter and shut up, haters.

Happy 14th Birthday! (Batteries not included.)

 




 

137 comments

  2. I’ve 2 teenage daughters(13 and 17) and at this point I’d probably be in jail for 1st degree felony assault. And when my youngest gets to her teen years, I’d rather not have to lock her in just to keep the pervs away from her, but I betcha I would. These laws are there for a reason and they damn sure need to be enforced better than they are now. No plea bargains,charges of statutory rape and straight jail time if convicted. No parole. Make the term jailbait mean exactly what it sounds like it means.

  3. I live in South Carolina. They finally woke up and changed their law from 14 to 16. Personally, I think it should be 18 myself.

  4. I do find it alarming that so many people do want to make it legal for adults to have children. This should be a wake up call for people that do not take culture seriously.

  8. Mike:
    When I was a teenager there (late 80s), it was 16.

    (Technically, it was the “deflowering” that was illegal, if you could prove you weren’t the one who (from memory) “deflowered any maiden prior to the 16th birthday…”) Found that out at a Boy’s State meeting, IIRC.

    Apparently, a lot of my compatriots were unaware of that at the time, and there was a lot of shocked intakes and a couple sobbing “I’m jailbait!”

  9. What is truly alarming is that there seem to be so few people who see how dangerous this “rights” rhetoric really is. The minute that you say statutory rape laws can’t be enforced because the parents who complain to the cops are “homophobes” … well, where does that leave us?

  10. South Carolina is one of two states that share the youngest age of consent in the nation.

    Under the South Carolina age of consent laws, a female must be 14
    years old to consent to have sex with an adult. The age of consent for
    males is 16 years old. A total of 6 other states including Delaware,
    Idaho, Massachusetts, Montana, Utah and Wyoming all have different ages
    of consent for men and women. In each of those states, the age of
    consent is 16 for women and 18 for men. The South Carolina statute
    covers heterosexual activity only – there is no minimum age of consent
    for homosexual activity.

    Only the state of Iowa has an age of consent as low as South
    Carolina. In South Carolina, a 14-year-old girl may legally consent to
    have sex with a 58-year-old man. While this may seem very young to many
    people, others point out that Marie Antoinette was just 14 when she
    became betrothed to the future Louis XVI of France, a boy she had never
    met. Still, the wedding didn’t actually take place until Marie was 15
    years old, and Louis-Auguste himself was barely a year older.

    Any South Carolina youths who hope to repeat Marie and Louis’s
    timetable will need their parents’ consent. You must be 18 years old to
    legally marry in South Carolina without your parents consent.
    Individuals under the age of 18 need a certified copy of the birth
    certificate and a notarized statement of parental consent. The minimum
    age for marriage in South Carolina is 14 for women and 16 for men.

    The crime of statutory rape occurs when an offender has sex with
    someone who is too young to give legal consent under the South Carolina
    age of consent laws. Statutory rape, or first-degree criminal sexual
    conduct with a minor, involves sexual intercourse with a person under
    the age of 11. The penalty is up to 30 years in state prison.
    Second-degree criminal sexual conduct is a crime involving intercourse
    with a person between the ages of 11 and 14. The sentence for this
    crime is up to 20 years in prison.

    This from http://blog.laborlawtalk.com/2006/11/09/south-carolina-age-of-consent-laws/

    This from 2011 post.

  11. That might be from a 2011 post, but in 1988, it was 16, from the lawyers talking to us.

    You could *marry* – with parental consent at 14.

    But I knew guys who were arrested for statutory rape who had girlfriends who were well past 14 into 15. So I’m not sure what they’re summarizing – but the legal discussion, and my classmates legal woes would indicate that 16 was the order of the day back then.

  13. How about “F**k your feelings. Other people have rights too and the responsibilities that go along with them. This isn’t about how you and how you FEEL.”

    There is a time and place to consider the feelings of others. That time isn’t when the welfare of those too young to think through the consequences of their actions is at stake.

  14. I have a right to protect my kids, and I think that right trumps the “right” of an adult who wants to finger them in a bathroom stall.

    One of the reason that these laws must be enforced is to maintain a somewhat civil society. The FreeKaters fail to realize that if the state stops prosecuting under these laws, people will resort to self help. The 12 gauge kind.

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