I find myself extremely confused with the Left’s sexual ethics. That’s probably because they have no sexual ethics. They appear to make it up as they go, vacillating between extremes and every once in a while landing on the correct answer when the correct answer happens to be convenient.
They have conveniently landed on the correct answer with the Roy Moore story. I don’t know if the accusations themselves are true, but it is true that a grown man who fondles a 14-year-old girl is a scumbag and a predator. Anyone guilty of this crime should be in prison. The operative word here, of course, is “guilty.” I don’t know if that word describes Roy Moore. I cannot say that it does. Neither can I say definitively, as many on the Right have, that it does not.
So, leaving aside the veracity of the allegations, I’d like to focus on a different but related phenomenon: It seems that liberals have suddenly discovered a passion for protecting the sexual innocence of children. Indeed, we’ve been reminded again and again over the past week that “14-year-olds can’t consent.” When it was perceived by some that Sean Hannity called Moore’s alleged rendezvous with a minor “consensual,” the Left pounced, insisting (accurately) that a child is not capable of entering into a truly consensual sexual relationship. They promptly began a #MeAt14 campaign on Twitter, which was meant to highlight the “vulnerability and innocence” teenagers.
The motto has been repeated in outraged tones thousands of times since the Moore story broke: Children are children. They can’t consent to sex.
I agree with their motto completely. But since when do they agree with it? Is their sudden opposition to childhood sexualization kind of like their sudden conviction that rape accusers should be believed — right after they twice made an alleged rapist president and then tried to put his wife, who allegedly intimidated the victims, in the White House after him?
As I have documented extensively, the Left has until this moment been incredibly eager to sexualize these “vulnerable and innocent” kids as early and graphically as possible. Children in middle school are given masturbation and oral sex how-to lessons. Kindergartners are taught about cross dressing and “transgenderism.” Pre-schoolers are gathered at the local library for drag queen story hours. Pre-teens are given birth control at school without parental notification. Young girls are invited to have abortions without parental notification. Even the music they listen to and the TV shows they watch are intensely sexual. Normally we are told that none of this is a problem. In fact, we’re assured, only out-of-touch puritans would dare suggest that children are too young for sex.
Until now.
I’m confused.
Tell me, liberals: are children too young for sex or not?
If children “can’t consent to sex,” as you now say, why are we giving them birth control? Why are we teaching them about fellatio and anal sex as early as sixth grade if they are years and years away from being able to consent to these activities?
If children are “vulnerable and innocent,” and they are psychologically incapable of understanding the moral seriousness and physical consequences of sex, and therefore incapable of giving their consent to it, why do you people laugh at the very notion of abstinence education? Why do you reject the idea that we should tell our kids not to have sex, if you, it turns out, actually agree that they are too young for it and may be permanently damaged by it?
Why do you complain about Roy Moore allegedly “sexualizing children” if you are not only okay with them being sexualized, but actively hostile to the idea that they should not be sexualized?
And please don’t answer that it’s somehow totally different when the innocent and emotionally unprepared kids are having sex with each other. It may not be criminal in that case, but they still are doing something you now say they are too young to do. If they are indeed too young to do it, shouldn’t we tell them so? Shouldn’t we urge them, whether they listen or not, to abstain from this thing that you suddenly agree is dangerous and corrupting for children their age? How can you spend 50 years cackling at the very notion of sexual restraint only to decide now, today, out of nowhere, that 14-year-olds are constitutionally incapable of consenting to the very thing you’ve been actively encouraging them to do?
Try to be consistent for once, you hypocrites. Have the courage of your convictions. If you don’t want kids to be sexualized, stop sexualizing them. It’s that simple.