[Julie Steiner]

John, to address various points you made:

Temptation is not sin.

Very few of us on the planet have never had a politically incorrect sexual fantasy. Very few of us have never thought, "Sheesh, what is wrong with me, that I find this sick stuff exciting, and can't seem to get it out of my head?" Very few of us would not be mortified if an uncensored version of the stuff in our heads were accessible to those whose opinions of us we care about.

Temptations are involuntary thoughts.

Sins are voluntary actions.

Big difference.

Of course, deliberately feeding a temptation (with porn or stalking or whatever) is a voluntary action, so that would cross the line into sin. But per se, just feeling a sexual attraction to something inappropriate? Not sinful.

Granted, a lot of the squeamish language used by religious instructors is so euphemistic that the distinction between involuntary thoughts and voluntary actions gets muddied. For example, it took me years to figure out that all those forbidding lectures I was subjected to about "entertaining impure thoughts" were probably intended to say "masturbating is bad"...but the latter concept was so indelicate that adults never dared mention it in language comprehensible to any kid in the room. (And also, of course, if any of us kids had managed to figure out what these adults were actually talking about, one of us would surely have asked them to explain what masturbation was, and why it was bad, and we can't have that, can we?) Anyway, if the object of the lectures was simply to make yet another generation neurotic about anything having to do with sex, they succeeded. Yay, tradition.

It's no secret that many adults find the firm young bodies of young people sexually attractive. That's not the problem. The problem is that some of these older, wilier adults exploit the young owners of those firm young bodies, to the great harm of those young people. And for what? A little temporary pleasure for the exploiter.

A few years ago I was looking into teen pregnancy statistics and stumbled across this: in 75% of that year's unwed births to California mothers under the age of 15, the fathers were over the age of 25 years. Seventy-five percent. And that was just the births--of course no figures were available for the men who took their teenaged girlfriends to get abortions, to make the evidence of statutory rape just quietly go away. (And, you know, sometimes birth control works, so the data wouldn't reflect those cases, either.) In short, there are an awful lot of creepy Californian over-25-year-olds determined to get their jollies, regardless of the destructive impact those jollies may have on young girls' lives. [Edited to say: I will try to come back and provide a more responsible citation for this than just "I remember".]

Those are the kinds of situations the "age-of-consent" laws are trying (unsuccessfully) to prevent. Not the kinds of December-May romances ending in marriage (i.e., longterm financial and [presumably] emotional support of the girl) that you mentioned.

I don't paint all of these relationships with the same brush, and I don't understand why you do.

In California, the penalties for statutory rape become less serious [Edited to say: misdemeanor as opposed to felony, and varying terms of prison time], the smaller the age difference between the parties. Two minors engaging in (still illegal) sexual activity are not treated the same as, say, a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old, who are also not treated the same as a 27-year-old having sex with a 17-year-old. [Edit: I changed the preceding sentences to make them gender-neutral.] There is also consideration given to the fact that not all 17-year-olds have the same mental and emotional maturity. There's a lot of wiggle room, and the courts use it to try to be reasonable and compassionate and fair to all parties. Again, the courts don't consider every underage relationship to be the same, and I don't know why you do.

Most US states allow the marriage of an underage girl to an adult man, if it has been determined (often, but not always, with parental input) that she is mentally and emotionally mature enough to consent to this, and that he is mentally and emotionally stable enough for this to be in the girl's best interest. If she is pregnant with the prospective groom's child, he may or may not be prosecuted for statutory rape. Usually not, if they are relatively close in age, and it seems that his motive for marrying her isn't just to escape prosecution. [Edited to say: I believe that if the adult is over 21 it's automatically a felony, but there is some leniency in sentencing depending on the circumstances.]

Generally, the practice of marrying off young girls occurs today in cultures in which fertility and domestic labor are seen as the only reason for a woman's existence. If a girl is raised to believe that her family and society value her only for her ability to crank out as many babies as possible and raise as many of them as possible to adulthood, she might very well want to get started on fulfilling her life's mission as soon as possible. [Edited to say: Or she might be terrified, but have no way out of the business contract between her father and husband-to-be.] Marriage does at least provide her with the compensation of financial stability (in addition to social status, and the inherent joys of being a wife and mother). The honor of being chosen for an early start on married life may well meet the only definition of success and happiness she's ever imagined for herself. [Edited to say: If the only other choices are getting thrown out (or murdered, see recent news from Pakistan) by your father for disobeying his wishes, or marriage to a wife-beater, or death, then marriage to some one who at least doesn't beat you is the best you can hope for, and you might consider yourself fortunate.] If she's fortunate enough not to be shackled to an abusive husband, or not to spend much time at the bottom of the pecking order of women in the household (mother-in-law, previous wives), she might even be happier in her arranged marriage than many women in the West who have chosen their own partners. [Edited to say: I expect to get slammed for this statement, so perhaps I should clarify that I'm not saying denying women any say-so over their lives makes them happier. I'm saying that it's possible to be in an oppressive situation and simply be content that it isn't much worse.]

Contrast her fate with that of a girl (or boy) who is sold into sex slavery. The pimp gets almost everything, and the poor kid just gets a subsistence diet, disease, and an early death. Even if that kid willingly consents to becoming a prostitute, is it really consent, when he or she has no other realistic options for survival?

And then, of course, there's just grooming a child for abuse, having one's fun, and shaming the kid into silence, as these priests tried to do. No concern for consequences to the child.

You really don't see a difference between those three scenarios, John? I don't find them at all equivalent, except for the fact that an adult gets to enjoy having sex with a child's young body in all three of them. The degrees of exploitation and damage to a young person's life are quite different, though.

In short, the priests who used their authority to sexually prey on young men and women really can't be compared to men wanting to marry teenaged girls, or to men simply fantasizing about sex with young people. Apples and oranges and bananas.

But I'm glad to discuss these distinctions. They're something that should be discussed.