15 Shocking Tales of How Sex Laws Are Screwing the American People

[NicholeW.]

15 Shocking Tales of How Sex Laws Are Screwing the American People
By Ellen Friedrichs, AlterNet. Posted June 12, 2009.

http://www.alternet.org/sex/140591/15_shocking_tales_of_how_sex_laws_are_screwing_the_american_people/?page=1


The older I get, the luckier I feel not to have been busted for breaking a sex law.  It's not that I have been doing anything particularly scandalous. Public sex sure isn't my thing, and I'm not in the habit of spamming my friends and colleagues with XXX emails. But in a world where a teen can get arrested for texting a boyfriend her own nudie shots, I don't want to take anything for granted.

Really though, my clean record probably has as much to do with where I've lived, as with what I've done.  Growing up in Canada, meant that I didn't worry about the legal ramifications of losing my virginity to my high school boyfriend. Had I spent those angst-ridden years in Texas, or even Maine, I could have been charged with the crime of underage sex.

[DarkLady]

In case I would be born woman I would just say we need same kind of laws here. Too many sexual predators go unpunished here. In Holland there was party for child molestors.

[NicholeW.]

The idea is "are these ordinances actually doing anything about sexual predators" or are they instead criminalizing consenting behaviors that are age-old?

We show a remarkable antipathy toward sexuality in USA and these ordinances are some of the ways that that comes out.

[Miniar]

DarkLady, you need to read that whole blog, word for word, before making statements like these.
_

I am not the kind of person that's easily moved by words on a screen, but this blog made me choke up.
These things are horrible, just horrible.

[Dennis]

DarkLady, you need to read that whole blog, word for word, before making statements like these.
_

I am not the kind of person that's easily moved by words on a screen, but this blog made me choke up.
These things are horrible, just horrible.

I agree. Those laws are victimizing children and ruining their lives, all while purporting to protect children.

Dennis

[lisagurl]

Too many sexual predators go unpunished here.

And they should be put in prison with Transgendered?

[DarkLady]

Without having my own minority experiences I would be just thinking about young children as victims of adult molesters. I would even ignore from my mind the issues that the artickle presents. As now ''fully'' woman I can understand more women who are scared of men who cannot control their private area.

[Starveil]

Why would you ignore the issues that the article represents, isn't the point of it in the first place to show that the theoretical interpretation and practical implementation of certain laws leave a lot to be desired?

Strictu sensu it's showing that some of them are being used as a vehicle for certain empowered individuals to enforce their own stringent conservative hetero-normative 'values' on others who 'dissent'. While the majority of laws (in an ethical regime) are indeed implemented to 'protect' people, it goes to show that they can also, and perhaps just as easy in a democratic and ethical regime opposite to dictatorial ones, be (ab)used to stigmatise others. I find that to be disgusting.

They are supposedly designed to protect children, the intention of which is of course a good thing. But the manner in which they are implemented is far from perfect, actually harming the children in the process.

There usually is a huge difference between the theory and practice of a law. If the solution is worse than the problem, then is it really 'solving' anything?