What a drag: 'Reefer Madness' of teen sex in Kansas

The Boston Globe's left-leaning columnist Ellen Goodman, via the Houston Chronicle:

Kansas is one of 12 states in which underage sex (under 16 in this case) is a crime even when it involves teen peers. In 2003, state Attorney General Phill Kline, a bandstanding pro-lifer, interpreted that law to require educators, counselors and health care workers to report virtually all sexual activity by those under 16 to the state.

The Kline Theory goes something like this: If sexual activity between teens is illegal, there's no such thing as consensual sex, and thus every act is harmful. These acts include "any lewd fondling or touching of the person ... with the intent to arouse or satisfy the sexual desires." In short, health care workers have to rat on 15-year-old sexual criminals who are lustily and mutually "abusing" each other in the back seat of a Toyota.

The health care workers sued, and the recent trial produced some pretty odd exchanges. When lawyer Bonnie Scott Jones of the Center for Reproductive Rights put Kline on the stand, she asked if anything beyond kissing was acceptable? Is oral sex performed by a boy a reportable crime? Yes, said Kline. Oral sex performed by a girl? "I'm not certain," he said.

Click here for the rest.

Man, Reefer Madness is so right. This country's gone insane in so many ways that I've lost count. This notion that teenagers simply shouldn't have sex is such a load of crap. I was shocked the first time I heard of this weird new Puritanism back when I was a high school teacher: a parent casually asserted to me in a conversation about something else that teens had no business having sex. Such a thought was so incredible to me that I forgot to argue with her about it. My god, if any humans should be having sex, it's teenagers! Evolution has made their bodies such that it's all many of them can think about. Why the hell do you think that, historically, most people were married by the time they were sixteen? Duh. Obviously, it was society's attempt to make sure their raging hormones didn't get out of hand. Today, people marry much later, and that's most likely for the best, but people's bodies remain as they always have been. It is foolish and impossible to repress human nature the way they're trying to do in Kansas. Instead, we ought to be teaching comprehensive sex education, you know, the kind with condoms, from early childhood on, so that there are no unwanted pregnancies or STDs. Man, these people are crazy!!! Teach abstinence, undermine the importance of condoms, and criminalize hormones. Fucking stupid. A recipe for disaster.

Didn't the twentieth century teach us anything?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$