Teenage sex is not the norm, so why defend it?
If the 'Fairytale of Kathmandu' does nothing else it ought to refocus minds on the thorny subject of the age of consent and encourage us to keep it at 17. We also need to look more closely at transgenerational sex, which is almost always exploitative.
At the heart of the 'Fairytale of Kathmandu' is this issue of exploitation rather than homosexuality or heterosexuality per se. If Cathal O Searcaigh was, say, a middle-aged politician or, even worse, a priest and he was discovered to be having sex with girls of 16 and 17 in some far-flung Third World country, there would also be outrage.
The politician or priest would have no defenders, no enablers, whatsoever. Why does O Searcaigh have defenders? Answering this question would require a column of its own. Suffice it to say that the defence of O Searcaigh by Aosdana (the state-funded artists' organisation) looks an awful lot like an artistic version of clericalism.
But the age of consent issue is an additional, crucial factor in this tale and it can be related to proposals to restore the zone of absolute protection around minors that are contained in the planned children's rights amendment.
Writing in this newspaper on Monday, the militant's militant, Peter Tatchell, advocated lowering the age of consent to 14 based on the bizarre notion that this would protect minors against sexual predators -- when it would obviously make them even more vulnerable.
In fact, the age of consent could in practice be even lower if Tatchell ever got his way. Another of his proposals is that two people, of apparently any age, should be allowed to have sex so long as they both consent and the age gap between those under the age of 14 is no more than three years.
To spell this out, it would seem to mean that if a 10-year-old had sex with a 13-year-old they would not be in breach of the law so long as they both 'consented' to it.
This is extraordinary, but there is a good prospect that someday it will be the sexual regime in Ireland because what sexual radicals demand today we often grant tomorrow.
The poet Alexander Pope was spot on when he wrote all those years ago: "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace."
If, on the other hand, we don't want a future in which 50-year-old men and women are free to have sex with teenage boys and girls, now is the time to think long and hard about the direction in which we are headed.
Sexual radicals usually advance their agenda in two ways that have proven to be fantastically effective. The first is to accuse their opponents of being old-fashioned and reactionary and the second is to tell the general public that we must be 'realistic'.
What they mean by 'realistic' is that we must face up to the fact that teenagers have sex, with or without the age of consent. Many, albeit a minority, have sex before they are 17.
What the sexual 'realists' tell us is that we must lower the age of consent in recognition of this and also expand the scope and ambition of sex education.
What they don't tell us is how their strategy is in fact entirely, and possibly willingly, defeatist. For a start, it treats teenagers who have sex before the age of consent as the norm, when not having sex before the age of consent is actually the norm.
But if we are to keep on lowering the age of consent in response to the fact that some teenagers, and even children, are having sex, when do we stop lowering it? At 15, 14, 12? Do we never try to draw a line in the sand?
Instead of lowering the age of consent we need to hold it at 17. In addition, the type of sex education we teach must, at the very least, be aimed at increasing the average age of first sexual intercourse, although even that is hardly very ambitious.
Finally, there is the problem of transgenerational sex. The 'Fairytale of Kathmandu' highlighted how sex between much older and much younger people is almost unavoidably exploitative and is doubly so when the older person has money and the younger person has none.
Restoring absolute liability in cases where an adult has sex with a minor would massively discourage this kind of exploitation, especially if the age of consent is held at 17.
Failing this, there should be an age gap of no more than three or four years between a teenager and his or her sexual partner.
Finally, there must be complete societal disapproval of such relationships and none of the 'sophisticated' moral ambiguity that has attended the present case that is in the public eye.
- David Quinn
