Op-Ed: The FLDS Case And The Glaring Hypocrisies Involving Underage Sex in America

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In preliminary statements at hearings in the San Angelo FLDS case, social workers have testified that many underage girls appear pregnant. There are even rumors of a 16-year-old girl having four children.

While this is all sorted out as fact (or not), there has been a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth at the FLDS church's alleged facilitation of statutory rape as intrinsic to and epidemic within the religion. If said rapes are confirmed by DNA testing, the men of the FLDS will no doubt be looking at similar jail sentences as Warren Jeffs, who is serving 10 years to life.

I have absolutely no problem with this. If they are all guilty of multiple statutory rape charges, first throw the book, then throw the key.

But there is a HUGE disparity between how the FLDS men are being treated and reviled, and the deafening silence about the epidemic of underage pregnancies, STDs and abortions in America (many of which adult men are responsible for), or our governments' eagerness to facilitate the availability of birth control and even abortion services to underage minor girls, bypassing parental knowledge and consent.

And I'm not talking about sex between minors here. I'm talking about adult statutory rape.

Let's first set aside the fact that America is a nation awash in even underage sexuality in advertising, media, education, internet pornography readily accessible to minors, film, that school health centers haven't been reporting underage sex they're aware of, or the huge double standard as it applies to older women having sex with minors, which even ABC couldn't ignore.

Let us also set aside the fact that I believe underage mothers SHOULD receive whatever assistance they need. I just believe it should be conditional on identifying the adult father, i.e statutory rapist, in cases in which that is where the responsibility lies. No identification, no benefits. Why should we subsidize statutory rape?

But that's whole 'nother 800-pound gorilla. On to the hard numbers.

First, from the CDC:

Persons 15-19 years of age account for 831,000 of all pregnancies that occur each year.

From the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics:

'Dr. Howell Wechsler, Director of the CDC Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH), provided an update on CDC’s adolescent sexual and reproductive health activities. Of all high school students in the United States, 47% are sexually experienced.

Persons 15-24 years of age account for nearly 50% or 9.1 million of all new STDs acquired each year. Based on data from 33 states with confidential name-based HIV infection reporting systems, an estimated 4,824 HIV cases occur annually among persons 15-24 years of age.

More statistics, from Wikipedia:

'Studies by the Population Reference Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics found that about two-thirds of births to teenage girls in the United States are fathered by adult men age 20 or older.[24]

So what are the policies of following up on this epidemic of statutory rape? Here's Planned Parenthood's:

'Because Planned Parenthood is most concerned with "terminating the pregnancy," the organization also fights against issues like parental notice, medical facility standards for abortion clinics, and the release of records of underage abortions, even with names and addresses deleted.

'This is key because such pregnancies indicate that crimes have been committed against the girls. Planned Parenthood hides under the guise of "patient privacy," as they have in Indiana and Kansas.'

So Mum's the Word. And if you don't believe that, just watch the embedded video.

Curiously, the Federal Government doesn't track statistics on statutory rape convictions, so I have no clue how many of the adult offenders responsible for many of the statistics have actually been convicted of the crime.

So, in the case of the FLDS, we should identify the adult males responsible for underage pregnancies and births. I'm with that.

But it is inexcusable for the State of Texas, or any other government agency, to focus its legal wrath on one group of offenders who are widely reviled and despised (thereby making them an easy and juicy target), while ignoring, overlooking, legally facilitating and even subsidizing the epidemic of statutory rapes that have been occurring under their noses for decades now.

Otherwise, I might just start thinking they went after the FLDS for less-altruistic reasons than saving the children.