Christians Deceived US On Harm Caused By CSA With Intent To Suppress Premarital Sex

The Case.Since this country began, the Christian Right/Conservatives have been attempting to mold the American Society to conform with their interpretation of God's Law. In the late 1800's Christian Women's Groups ... Reformers ... decided to change the prevailing sexual status quo. It was their view that prostitution by young girls was getting out of hand. At the time, the age a female could legally consent to sex without parents knowledge and/or approval ranged from 10 to 12 in the US. Delaware was the one notable exception at 7. The Christian women successfully pressured state legislatures to drastically raise the sexual age of consent. They hoped to raise it to 21, but settled for 16 to 18. !0, 11, 12 year old girls could no longer prostitute themselves, their regular clients ... many of whom were the husbands of the Christian reformers, legislators, and others of power and influence did not dare risk getting caught. The 'market' dried up, and most prostitution dried up with it. The added benefit from the reformers view was, there was far less fornication. Fast forward to today. There have been several more 'righteous' movements. What the reformers started is now a concerted effort by conservative Christians to both keep a tight lid on fornication, and preserve feminine purity for marriage. To that end, they extended their 'campaign of shame' in the 1980's with the assistance of sympathetic mental health professionals to systematically exaggerate the harm young people suffer from sexual activity, and created a 'villain' in the form of the pedophile. They have hyped the damage. They have instilled shame and guilt. They have repressed factual sexual information. They have created a public hysteria who in turn=n demanded ever more draconian punishment's for sex offenders. They introduced new words into the lexicon. 'Experts' backed them up. Pejorative terms. Predator. Victim. Molester. Survivor. Child sex is now CSA ... Child Sex Abuse. They have 'associated' every possible social negative behavior with sex abuse, repeating the message so many times, it is now 'fact'. It's NOT fact. It's a lie. Proof that it is a lie, is the marital exemption in the child rape law posted below. There are 27 other states that make the same exemption.If a child is incapable of consenting to sexual intercourse, as the Christians claim, then she is also incapable of consenting to marriage and sexual intercourse.If a child suffers egregious harm from having sex with an adult, as the Christians claim then she will suffer the same egregious harm with a marriage certificate.If all men who desire sex with little girls are sexual perverts, as the Christians have claimed, then he is still a pervert if he marries her. Some of the claims made by Christians ...We know that a child's brain doesn't finish developing until early 20's. Clearly, a child is incapable of consenting to sexual intercourse. And one can only imagine the terror the child experiences when attacked by those sick perverts.And then there are the inevitable physical injuries. Again, it's impossible to imagine the agony the child (especially a delicate fragile female) suffers when an adult physically assaults her. According to CSA websites, the injuries are invariably grievous, often life threatening, requiring reconstructive surgery.Certainly these are traumas that we, as a society, must spare no effort to prevent.Yet, I am troubled. I can't quite put my finger on it, but as I listen to Christians argue in favor of putting child molesters to death, something just doesn't seem right.Perhaps part of my misgivings stems from the knowledge that until the beginning of the 20th century the Christians have been (arguably) the West's misogynistic poster children, and as such, it's difficult to look past the irony in their cries for revenge and retribution.We all know that in the Old Testament, a rape victim was to be stoned to death ... by her father. There was some improvement in the New Testament; a fine paid to the father and the victim is given to the rapist to rape again ... as his wife. Hmm.Of course, this barbaric practice was stopped thousands of years ago.RCW 9A.44.073Rape of a child in the first degree.(1) A person is guilty of rape of a child in the first degree when the person has sexual intercourse with another who is less than twelve years old and not married to the perpetrator and the perpetrator is at least twenty-four months older than the victim.(2) Rape of a child in the first degree is a class A felony.[1988 c 145 " 2.] [1]Apparently it wasn't. And I am in awe of Christian hubris, duplicity, and hypocrisy.This is current child rape law in Washington State. There are 27 additional states that make the same exception. Oh, and District of Columbia, too.Child rape is a crime so heinous, so we are told, it's on par with first degree murder. Many Christians would argue it is a crime far worse than murder.BUT IT'S NOT A CRIME AT ALL ... IF THEY ARE MARRIED.Please note that per the Washington State Legislature, this law applies to girls 11 years old and younger. There is no lower bound set by the state.Nor did the state choose to set an upper limit for the age of the perpetrator.Christians wrote this law. Christians voted on and passed this into law. And this same marital exemption applies to any statutory sex crime.What about those other states? Not surprisingly, Christians control those legislatures too. You can find those 27 states at this link. [2]There are an additional 6 states that modify rape law to some degree in favor of marriage.Christians have made a plethora of claims surrounding this issue. Clearly the law speaks quite eloquently on it's own.However, just one more glaring hypocrisy ...The Yemen child bride.America learned of her death, and we were sickened. The story lived for weeks ... then months ... Christian child advocacy groups never let it get too far from our thoughts.Strangely, it apparently never occurred to the American public to ask why they had to go all the way to Yemen to find a girl who died solely from sexual intercourse, as Christians all over the blogosphere were screaming about our own child rape victims, with the clear implication that they were dying too.2 years ago, conservatives succeeded in having rape redefined on the federal level to include penetration of any type of any bodily orifice no matter how slight.**************************************************************************************************************The marital exemption contradicts Conservative assertions that all adult/child sex causes egregious harm. The Christian Right, in attempting to force society to conform to religious law is committing an egregious injustice, both to the perpetrators and the victims. 1. http://apps.leg.wa.gov...2. http://aspe.hhs.gov...