Consensual sex laws vary by state, and nearly all of them are set at somewhere between the ages of 16 and 18. Teenagers accused of having consensual sex before the age established by the state have been punished in many places other than Texas. But Texas is particularly notorious for such prosecutions. Then again, Texas just likes throwing people in jail. And of course, killing them once they are there.

Interestingly, many states have different ages of consent depending on whether you are male or female. In Delaware, Idaho, Massachusetts, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming, you can have legal sex at 16 if you are female, but not until 18 if you are male. Presumably this is so those faster-maturing girls don’t leave their 2-years-older boyfriends squirming for too long. In the state of Montana a female can have consensual sex with a male when she is 16 years old, but not with another female until she’s 18. I can’t come up with an explanation for that one. In New Hampshire both males and females must wait until they are 16 years old to have consensual sex, unless they want to get married, in which case they can do so as young as 13 years old as long as they have parental permission. Oh wait – males have to be 14.

States don’t just legislate how old you have to be to have sex, some of them still regulate whether or not one can have gay or lesbian sex. In most of our lifetimes it was illegal for a black person and a white person to have sex (though only really enforced if the white half of that equation happened to be a woman). Prostitution (Eliot Spitzer being a rather noteworthy exception) is generally illegal for the selling party – 99 times out of 100 a woman. What is our country doing spending so much time and money legislating sex? Aren’t our lawmakers busy enough with our completely ineffective and grossly expensive drug war?

But I digress. What got me on this tangent? The intersection of our national sexual fixation with our national religion. I was reading a newspaper article about two 20-somethings who broke into (i.e., broke the latch on the door of) a little used church in MacClenny, Florida for the purpose of having sex in a sanctified space. They are still cooling their heels in jail a day later. They are being charged with damage to property, criminal mischief, and burglary. From what I can tell they didn’t steal anything, they broke the lock on the door, and they left their underwear laying around in the church. Stupid? Yes. Should they have to go in front of a judge and answer for their breach of a law? Yes. Dangerous? Perhaps only to their reputations. An offense worthy of keeping two young people in jail? Oh come on.

What’s got folks all upset is that these two young people wanted to have sex in a church (actually, in classic Eve fashion, the newspapers from that part of the country have laid the blame firmly at the 24-year-old woman’s feet – the poor 28-year-old guy was found “hiding in a crawl space under the church.” Well, Adam wasn’t that bright either, but at least he didn’t get the whole damn human race thrown out of the garden. Though if you think about it, if the price we pay is childbirth, I think they can start leaving chicks like this young lady alone already. The local television station, Channel 4 in Baker County, ran their headline news story under the banner Unholy Act.

If they had broken the lock on someone’s barn, someone’s garage, even someone’s little-used country house (and they weren’t in Texas), nobody would be in jail right now. But they broke the lock on sacred space. And not just anybody’s sacred space. Christian sacred space. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d be willing to wager that a young couple breaking the lock on someone’s private tarot parlor, someone’s yoga studio, or near someone’s Buddhist altar to have sex wouldn’t be partaking of jail meals either. Still wrong. But not likely a jail-able offense.

Am I anti-Christian? Definitely not. I am pro-whatever-it-is-you-do-to-love-your-fellow-man-and-make-a-better-world-for-all-of-us. I don’t sit around worrying about the state of anybody else’s soul, but that’s only a prerequisite for some sects of Christianity anyway. No, my issue is three-fold.

• As an American citizen I have an issue with using the law to enforce something as serious as jail-time for an infraction that, had it occurred in any other architectural structure, would likely not lead to jail time.
• As a human being, I have an issue with society being so quick to treat sexuality and sexual behavior as fundamentally wrong – even “un-godlike.” Why would God give us something so incredibly awesome as sex if it wasn’t inherently good? And don’t tell me it’s for the purpose of having children, because I have three of those at home. If that were the reason then God is the most profound tease in the history of the Universe.
• Finally, when will humanity tire of blaming women for all this sex? Clearly men don’t enjoy it, never engage in it, and are never the ones to come up with the idea for having it. Except, of course, when they do. The news media’s blaming of Crystal Rowland continued, when on their news broadcast they also said that Matthew Pearce’s family had been in to speak with him and he “wanted to apologize for his actions. He had been drinking that day and he really didn’t know what was going on.” No word from the Rowland camp, nor do I think it likely that there will be.

So. Miss Crystal Rowland and Mr. Matthew Pearce are a horny young couple with bad enough judgment to consider a minor breaking and entering charge a reasonable risk for a sexual dalliance. Not my choice of evening entertainment, but I’ve never considered shoplifting or dine-n-dash either. Nonetheless, could some of my North Central Florida readers please make up a couple of homemade picket signs and suggest to the Honorable Sheriff Gerald Gonzalez that he let those young folks go free?

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill