Apr 10
25
“The Age of Sexual Consent” is a Bad Way to Fight Pedophilia
“The Age of Sexual Consent” is a Bad Way to Fight Pedophilia
One of the main issues social conservatives in Canada and elsewhere have been championing has been the raising of the age of sexual consent – in Canada from 14 to 18. (It was raised to 16 a couple of years ago.) Sex with anybody below the age of consent was identified as pedophilia, a grotesque offense against vulnerable children.
Attempts by some, primarily from homosexual and libertarian circles, to moderate such black and white lines in view of the different timing and rates of physical maturation from one person to the next were shot down. No compromise was tolerated by social conservatives. Sex with anyone under the age of sexual consent should face the full force of the laws against child sexual assault, such as they are.
Imagine my surprise when, in the midst of the current Roman Catholic clergy controversy, one of the lines of defense being used against charges of child sexual abuse from the Vatican – and also from Fr. Alphonse de Valk in Canada – has been parsing the definition of pedophilia.
Additional Vatican comments followed the uproar over words associating the clergy sex scandal with homosexuality rather than celibacy. Regarding the additional comments, a Canadian Press article from April the 14th reported the following: “[Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico] Lombardi cited some of the statistics, from a March interview in a Catholic newspaper with Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s abuse prosecutor. The spokesman noted that Scicluna said the allegations involving ‘pedophilia in the strict sense’ accounted for 10% of the cases, 60% of cases involved adolescents in homosexual relations, while the other 30% of cases involved adolescents in heterosexual relations. In all, Scicluna told the publication of the Italian bishops conference, 300 of some 3,000 cases that his office handled from 2001 to this year involved ‘acts of true and actual pedophilia’.”
Fr. Alphonse de Valk wrote in Catholic Insight (April 20, 2010): “Clergy sex abuse continues to be described erroneously by the media as pedophilia. Pedophilia (a form of sodomy) is sexual abuse of little children-boys and girls-mostly between the ages of 3 to 6 or 7. Only a tiny percentage of sexual abuse cases among Catholic clergy was of this nature. The large majority (over 80%) of the clergy abuse case in the recent past in North America-Canada and the United States-have been found to be with adolescents, mostly boys between the ages of 12 to 18 years of age, the ages from which altar boys are drawn. This is not pedophilia….”
To this point, I’ve not read anything from other social conservatives condemning this attempt to distinguish between different categories of sex with minors. To be sure, I haven’t spent as much time as some others pouring over the coverage. Agence France-Presse reporting on the same comments (as printed by The Ottawa Citizen, April 15), editorialized that the comments “added more fuel to the fire.” I haven’t seen that prophecy materialize in the headlines of subsequent media stories on the issue.
Now, before I unnecessarily alienate a sizable portion of my readers, let me state that I agree with the Vatican and Fr. De Valk on this matter. The distinction being made is pretty obvious to anybody with eyeballs, an experiential understanding of the maturation process (which is the case for everyone who has passed through it) and a Christian framework for moral reasoning. So why did social conservatives champion age of consent as a useful paradigm for capturing perverts and protecting children. I’m not sure. No doubt some of my readers can educate us on this point. Maybe it had to do with fitting the campaign into language that already existed in the law rather than coming up with something wholly different. Perhaps it was jumping on a strategy that seemed to be effective in another country. At any rate, perhaps with the current controversy and these voices that challenge the socon status quo, there will be a valuable shift to a better way for protecting children and capturing perverts – a shift that lines up our political positions more consistently with Scripture and reality.
So what does this mean in terms of the perversions of pedophilia and sex with minors.
I was never solidly behind campaigns to raise the age of sexual consent. There seemed to be some merit to the strategy to protect some women from prostitution by pimps who exploited the law. But the whole idea of using an age-based argument against sex, instead of a marital-status-based argument, just didn’t sit right. The Bible condemns sex outside of marriage, period. Most politically active and culturally engaged Christians today seem to have given up the fight for that standard. It does look pretty hopeless in our current environment. But what’s the Christian’s standard? Who is the Christian’s God? What right do we have to give up that fight if we claim to be Christians?
I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with focusing on particular aspects of sexual immorality, especially when there may be strategic opportunities to secure the right standards in our culture. But we have to do so within the right context. With very few exceptions, social conservatives have abandoned the fight for preserving sex within marriage. That isn’t surprising because, considering the prevalence of sex outside of marriage in Christian circles, especially among our youth, we have compromised ourselves and are clueless about how to disciple our own children in righteousness. God is not mocked, and He won’t let hypocrites advance their own agendas in His name while we do something very different “at home.” In the context of this vacuum of messaging on sexual purity, the age of consent message sounds hollow and pragmatic, rather than principled.
“Age of consent” also struck me as a very arbitrary approach to distinguishing between lesser and more severe crimes, and one that could easily be whittled away at by liberals when they chose to do so. The concept of exploitation on the basis of a position of trust or power is substantive and it comes in to play in the matter of age of consent. But establishing age as a hard moral line is quite objectionable for several reasons, including the extent to which maturity (physical, emotional and relational) levels and rates differ from one person to the next. Age might be a legitimate POLITICAL line to draw with the recognition that it reflects a generally appropriate line based on average levels of maturity. But it’s very hard to argue a POLITICAL line without infusing it with MORAL conviction. Social conservatives have, therefore, tended to try to put MORAL weight behind age of consent arguments as well. This is a big problem, especially when they settle for the political compromise of 16 when many of them were initially pushing for the age to be set at 18.
But it also faces the same problem incremental pro-lifers have had pushing a gestational approach to anti-abortion legislation. How do you make the case philosophically/principially to ban abortion at a certain gestational age without implicitly approving of abortions after that age? (Other incremental strategies with abortion don’t face the same dilemma.) In terms of age of consent, how do you make the moral case for an age of sexual consent without implicitly endorsing the moral legitimacy of consensual sex by older people – especially when you have been silent for so long on the fundamental immorality of any sex outside of marriage (which includes our political ambivalence today on common-law relationships which are non-marital sexual relationships)?
It is true that while all sex outside of marriage is sinful, some expressions of this sin are worse than others. The Westminster Confession of Faith makes the point that a sin worse in certain contexts than in others. Even if one doesn’t support the use of Old Testament punishments for sexual sin today, God’s stipulated penalties for different sexual offences is a good place to start in terms of identifying those sexual sins that should be treated as worse than others. Using this criteria, we would recognize that incest, homosexuality and bestiality are particularly offensive sexual sins. Sexual assault against prepubescent or sexually immature children, with the inherent victimization and exploitation of such actions, is also a greater sin than other sexual offences.
In terms of Christian ethics, we can note that sexual attractions to prepubescent children, those of the same sex and animals are abnormal. It is normal for men and women to find each other physically attractive. Sexual lust is a temptation and sin that is common to all people – perhaps more among men – at least that’s the stereotype. Once a female is fully developed physically, then her age doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on a man’s sexual interest. There’s a rationality to the idea of imposing greater penalties on sexual deviations that move into the realm of the abnormal. There are also other reasons for treating some sins as greater/worse than others, such as adultery – breaking your marriage vow because God treats vows extremely seriously – and when sexual sin victimizes vulnerable, innocent victims rather than taking place among consenting adults.
Let’s turn now to another problem that is created by “age of consent” thinking.
As a growing number of people home school their children and teach them through their entire childhood years, Christians are rediscovering the fact that children can mature much earlier than is normal today. One of the most tragic effects of the government school mentality has been the extension of childhood. An ideological concept was invented to rationalize this development. We call it adolescence. “Adolescent” is not a synonym for “teen.” Adolescent is an ideological concept, and it stands for the illegitimate, unbiblical delay of the social recognition of adulthood.
Our government school structured social order requires young people to be considered children long after their physical development has signalled adulthood. This is also beyond the time that is required if they were discipled and mentored by parents and others into relational, intellectual, social and emotional adulthood at a natural age.
How many of you know of a single teenager who is mature enough to be married? Especially a young man with the responsibility of leading his wife and being the head of his household, providing, protecting and teaching? The very concept is probably ludicrous to many, and understandably so considering out culture. But read some history, research what young men and women were capable of years ago: marriage, entrepreneurship, diplomatic postings, self-defense. The current situation is tragic. It is evidence of a culture that has abandoned God and His law.
But back to the topic at hand… Most people can’t imagine older teens today being ready for marriage, so the potential for age of consent laws to confound legitimate relationships wouldn’t cross many minds. But it should. And it’s beginning to do so as a small but growing number of teens – mostly home schooled – demonstrate adult maturity. Encouragement of younger marriage is also a strategy that culture transforming Christian leaders are considering as a Biblical way to harness the “sexual energy” of youth. Do Christians today even ask why God gives young people a strong sex drive? Is it to exasperate and frustrate them? Sometimes we overlook such elementary questions because we’re so influenced by our non-Christian culture. Earlier marriage is also a good plan for those want a large family.
We have covered a fair bit of territory with this article. In closing, I want to thank the Vatican for providing the context for an important debate that social conservatives need to have with each other. We need this debate in order to rethink the way we have approached a very important issue regarding the protection of innocent children and our fight for sexual purity.