However, this one caught my eye: https://www.allout.org/en/actions/kate?utm_source=platform&utm_medium=rapidfire&utm_content=english&utm_campaign=kate
Some of you may be aware of this already as the situation where Kaitlyn Hunt, 18 year old girl, faces 15 years in prison for having sex with her younger girlfriend. The parents of the younger girl, who obviously can't be named for child protection reasons, apparently called the police two days after Kate's 18th birthday in February, and Kate was charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child. Naturally this has caused outcry with a great many people who feel that the law punishing Kate is wrong, including many who feel that the situation is about homosexuality rather than the law.
The information on the petition site is, for editorial purposes I suspect, limited to generate the most sympathy for Kate, and I did sign it. However it is a little too easy to get angry about this sort of thing without giving it due consideration.
So let's look at the facts:
- Kate and her girlfriend know each other from being on their High School Basketball team.
- There is conflicting information about the ages of the two girls, however it is most commonly reported that Kate was 18 and the younger girl was 14 at the time, now 15.
- The relationship began in November 2012.
- The couple did have sex, Kate admitted to it.
- The younger girl went missing in January, it was discovered that Kate had picked her up and taken her to her bedroom where there was another sexual encounter.
- There was a controlled phone conversation between Kate and the younger girls mother where she was advised to stop.
- The following day, the police officer monitoring the call arrested Kate.
- She was charged with the offence of Sex Battery on a child over 12.
- She was offered a conditional plea offer, which meant she would have been under house arrest for two years followed by one year's probation, amongst other things. She has now refused this offer and the case will go to trial.
So, should the younger girl's parents have got the police involved on what appeared to be a consenting sexual relationship between two girls of a relatively wide age gap?
As it happens, they are well inside their rights to do exactly that. Under Florida law, you can't legally consent to sex until you are 18 years old. I don't know how Florida law relates to Parental Responsibility, but if it is the same position as the UK then it is up to her parents who she can and can't be in a relationship/have sex with.
The parents of the younger girl have been accused, all-too-easily, of 'gay-bashing' and blaming Kate for their daughter's homosexuality. They have denied this. Do we believe it? Well, given how outspoken some Americans can be about homosexuality and gay rights, my view is that if they really did have a problem with their daughter being a lesbian and sought to blame Kate for it, they would have been a lot more vocal about it. On the other hand you're hardly going to admit to being a gay basher while being accused of bigotry and homophobia.
But if we do what the state of Florida are currently refusing to do, which is set aside the law and make it a question of morality, that can create a lot more problems.
Is homosexuality really such a bad thing? My view is, absolutely not. I do have several gay friends of both genders, and they are friends first, gay people second. I've never had any problems with it. I'm not about to start now.
The problem for the parents of the younger girl appears to have been the age gap between the two girls. Was that such a bad thing? It's not very easy to give an answer to this, to be honest.
But let's start by looking at the age gap itself. We know Kate was 18 when the relationship began. The case report does not give the younger girl's date of birth, but it is commonly reported that she was 14 when the relationship began and is 15 now. This would put the age difference between the two girls at approximately 3 years. I hope that will be recognised by the several sites I've seen claiming that there were only 2.
Is there a problem with a 3-year age gap? For me, in and of itself, no there is not. Apart from anything else, there's over 4 years between my girlfriend and I, we've been together for nearly 3 years knowing that and we've done alright. Limit yourself to people by age and you really are narrowing your horizons quite a bit.
However, the age of the two girls should be considered here. While I do not wish to call Kate a sex offender, the girls were always going to encounter problems with one being 18 and the other being 14-15. Most saliently for me, I remember being all of those ages, and how much my opinions on sex and relationships changed between them, despite at both points being yet to have either. Kate may well say she loves her girlfriend, but simply by being 4 years younger and with her mind, body and emotions still under development, it will not mean the same thing to the younger girl. She may say the same, and mean well, but she won't mean it in the same way Kate does.
Was the younger girl too young to be having sex? Well, technically yes, but that rarely stops people. Were her parents right to get the police involved in order to put a stop to it? To be honest, I don't think so. That law exists to protect young people who are unable to consent to a sexual relationship from being taken advantage of by older people, and calling the police to break up a consensual relationship between two teenagers appears to me to be a disgusting application of that law. The old expression about hammers and nuts comes to mind, especially when they start talking about a maximum penalty of 15 years. I would imagine anyone who read that they had called the police but weren't sure of the other facts would consider the move either a knee-jerk reaction, or the foolish bigotry they are being accused of.
I know I said that the difference in age would have caused some problems for the girls anyway, and there is little doubt that Kate behaved extremely irresponsibly. But if she's found guilty, or even if she'd taken the plea bargain, it would pretty much destroy her life. She would be unable to go to college, she would lose all her friends, and if she does manage to get a job after parole she'll be looking at a life of hard labour as she has been expelled from her school and will not have any qualifications. Is that a proportionate punishment for having a sexual relationship with a girl four years younger than you? I don't think so.
Of course, I am not a parent, so what do I know? Not much, but if I was presented with the same situation, I would not have dealt with it this way. I certainly would not have gone so far as to call the police.
What would I have done? Well, first I would recognise that taking an arbitrary, heavy-handed approach would do more harm than good. Now my girlfriend Amy and I might not necessarily agree on what age people should start having sex. This is because it was never actually an issue for us. I was well into my 20s when we got together, Amy was coming up on 21, and we'd never had to prepare ourselves for the fact that it might become an issue before that time. I'm not saying we disagree about it, it simply doesn't come up often enough in conversation (why would it?) to know one way or the other. And we probably won't, until such time as we become parents ourselves and underage sex becomes a matter that gives rise to some concern.
But, hypothetically speaking, if I discovered that my 14-year old daughter was in a relationship with an older girl of 18, and that they had sex at some point... First, I'd sit down with my daughter and talk to her about it. Accuse her of nothing, I would just want to know what's going on. It would be important to me that she understands that legally, she is too young to be having sex, and while her feelings and emotions are still developing it is inadvisable to get closely involved with somebody who was older, simply because it's biologically impossible for them to be feeling the same thing. However, I wouldn't put a stop to it straight away. I'd like to meet her girlfriend; I'd be looking for a maturity in her that would make me feel that she also understands what she's getting herself into. No threats. And I would make it clear to my daughter, and her girlfriend if appropriate, that if there ever becomes a problem, she gets upset and she needs someone to talk to, then she is always welcome to talk to me, and I would help in whatever way I could with whatever the problem was. The message would be: Don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it.
And if it was an older boy... same thing, except that if we hadn't had a talk about the birds and the bees by that point, that might be a good time. Again, I wouldn't necessarily be happy about the idea of my daughter having sex with anyone really, but if there was one thing I could do to make sure she does, it would be to ban her from doing it. So if she's going to do it, I'd be happier if she didn't feel she had to keep it a secret. And I would have to make one very clear rule - absolutely never without protection. At least, not while I'm responsible for her.
But back to the matter in hand... Sadly, if the same situation came up in the UK, the position wouldn't be much different. The legal age of consent for sex for lesbians in this country is 16, but your parents are responsible for you until you're 18. That means that until you are 18, your parents are well within their rights to tell you where you can go, what you can do and who you can spend your time with. So, it's up to your parents, really.
One last point, which I'm sure some of you will be wondering by now: What do I care about all of this? I've never met Kaitlyn Hunt, her girlfriend or her parents. Hell, I've never even been to America, let alone Indian River County in Florida where all this is going on. What's it got to do with me?
Well it's this: I mentioned before that I have some gay friends. Some of them are quite young, and although I've never really known gay people who are under the age of consent, I have known some gay people who were - but no longer - beneath the age of parental responsibility. And if it had been my friend, or anybody else I know and love, up in front of a judge because of a situation similar to this, I would be absolutely livid. And I would fight tooth and nail to try to get them off. I would make no secret of my intense dislike for the completely out-of-proportion reprisal, and of the people who instigated it. And I would make sure everybody -EVERYBODY - I know knew what was happening.
Because as far as I'm concerned, Kaitlyn Hunt has done nothing wrong.
If you want to sign the petition by the way, here's the link:
https://www.allout.org/en/actions/kate?utm_source=platform&utm_medium=rapidfire&utm_content=english&utm_campaign=kate
And I would be very interested to hear what you guys think of all this.
