Are We Carrying Sexual Activism Too Far?

It is one of the many ironies of the age we live in, that promiscuity and sexual activism are advancing hand in hand. Almost anything that has even a tenuous sexual connotation constitutes sexual harassment these days.

I am certainly not condoning sexual harassment in any form. However, I do believe we are overdoing it. I am questioning the legal definition that classifies every act, with even remote sexual overtones, as a felony or a misdemeanor. And this at a time when some boys and girls, as young as 13, are having consensual sex.

Consider the latest case of a 13 year old girl from Sutton, Alaska. She has been charged with sexual assault and harassment; and is being held in a juvenile facility. And what was her crime? She touched two young boys, also 13, "inappropriately" in the school bus. The boys claimed that the girl had touched them over their clothing. That is sexual assault? Give me a break. And now a 13 year old girl will have to live with the consequences of a police record for the rest of her life – which, in her case, is almost all of her life. This is justice?

I am not advocating that parents should look the other way when such incidents take place. But what happened to the common sense logic about the punishment fitting the crime. Who among us has not sought to satisfy his natural sexual curiosity when they were young? With this absurd legal definition of sexual harassment, half the people in the country would be designated as felons.

If parents from an earlier generation had found their daughter behaving in a similar manner, they would probably have given her a good talking to, possibly spanked her; and grounded her for a month. They certainly would not have expected her to end up in a juvenile facility; in company with far more dangerous social misfits.

And what about the parents of the "violated" young boys, who brought these ridiculous charges? Are they feeling proud of themselves? Are they genuinely as outraged as they profess to be? Or do they see an opportunity for a monetary settlement out of court? This may appear as a cynical viewpoint but, in today’s highly materialistic society, I am afraid this is more than likely.