Be heard on the issues that matter most to you!
Genarlow Wilson is free today after the Georgia Supreme Court ordered yesterday ordered his release. Yet the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports on other teens still locked into sex offender registration for similar crimes.
Age of consent laws, and the punishments attached to them, are deeply problematic. Yet solutions to those problems are hard to even talk about in a society like ours that so stigmatizes sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and that has developed out-of-proportion fears of teens, of sex, and of the combination of the two.
How do we get out of this mess?
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
we're not going to get anywhere until we can begin to change the general attitude that sex and sexuality are somehow bad or dirty (in a negative sense) or activities and attributes that should be hidden from view.
Until we (the royal we, the general public) acknowledge that teenagers have sex, that people have sex, that it's a good thing, to be celebrated in the open, we're going to continue to have insane, medieval laws like the one that put Genarlow Wilson in prison pushed on us by the self hating, reality denying snake charmers that occupy the pulpits of America.
How do we get there from here? We start at home. "Hey Sue, did you hear they finally let that Genarlow Wilson kid out of prison? Geez, what a mess they made of that. It still burns me that teenagers having sex is a crime though. Can you believe that? Why, right here in North Carolina, just the other day..."
Beyond that, I'm torn. As much as I despise the tactics of the repressive right, I'm not sure that waiting around until the Enlightenment arrives in fundy America is a viable plan. Whatever their ideological and mental failings, I have to admit that denigration, ridicule, and marginalization are effective tools in their toolbox. I admit to occasionally borrowing from their playbook in frustration. Then I shower.
Kisses,
JanieBelle
