Clarification on "Age of Consent"

(Letter)

21 November 2006

To the editor:

It’s important that Workers Vanguard has come out in defense of Mark Foley, the Republican bigot run out of Congress for sending naughty notes to teenage male pages. His persecution is bad news. This is the case particularly for youth, and especially for gay youth, who already face anti-sex persecution and harassment. The witchhunting of Foley only puts more weapons in the hands of the bigots.

In that light, Workers Vanguard uses an inappropriate term when it refers to “intergenerational” sex (WV No. 878, “U.S. Torture Elections” and WV No. 880, “Vote No on ‘Sex Dragnet’ Prop 83!”). “Age of consent” laws make it a crime for a 19-year-old to have sex with a 15-year-old in all states except Hawaii and South Carolina, where the age of consent is 14 and 15, respectively (it is 16, 17 or 18 everywhere else). This is hardly “intergenerational.” Preaching abstinence and chastity for teens, the sex witchhunters aim to trample on the lives of youth and smear all “age of consent” violations as acts of “sex predators.” If it goes into effect, California’s Proposition 83, recently approved by 70 percent of the voters, will ramp up yet more the arsenal of harsh laws against those the state deems “deviant.” At this time, a federal court has blocked enforcement of the law as possibly unconstitutional because it may apply retroactively to “sex offenders” convicted years ago.

After spearheading the drive for the Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, ex-Congressman Foley is now caught in his own web: the state of Florida and the FBI have opened criminal investigations into his “sexually explicit Internet messages.” As WV No. 878 correctly stated, “We defend Foley as we would any victim of sex witchhunts.”

The Spartacist League opposes all laws criminalizing by definition a “type” of sex, be it pedophilia, homosexuality, incest or adultery. The only guideline that should exist is that of effective consent—the mutual consent of the parties involved at the time. What goes on in people’s sex lives is manifestly not the business of the state.

Comradely,
Amy Rath