We have become accustomed to public outrage and protests based on claims that homosexuals are discriminated against and given unequal treatment under the law, but a recent petition campaign receiving an explosion of media coverage argues that homosexuals should not be treated equally under the law, and implicitly supports criminal sexual activity with a minor.
Kaitlyn Hunt, an 18-year-old Florida high school student, is facing two felony charges of "lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16" for engaging in sexual activity with a 14-year-old female student at her school. Hunt's parents launched a petition on Change.org alleging their daughter "is not guilty of anything other than a high school romance," and blamed the 14-year-old child's parents for pressing charges because "they are against the same-sex relationship." The petition has over 145,000 signatures, and a Facebook page in defense of Hunt has over 39,000 supporters.
The charges against Hunt are punishable by up to 15 years in prison and could require her to register as a sex offender. She has until May 24 to accept an agreement with prosecutors to plead no contest to a lesser charge of child abuse which would likely result in house arrest and probation, but no jail time or registration as a sex offender.
Left-leaning advocacy groups and the media are defending Hunt, insisting without proof that she is being discriminated against because she is a homosexual-discriminated against in order to equally apply the law. Their main argument is that 18-year-old boys and 14-year-old girls have sex all the time without charges filed or parents seeming to mind, so Hunt is obviously being singled out. Besides being completely untrue that males are not charged with such crimes, or that the parents of the victims don't care, the argument is irrelevant. Once authorities know a crime has been committed, they have a duty to enforce the law no matter the offender's sexual orientation.
"If this was an 18-year-old male and that was a 14-year-old girl, it would have been prosecuted the same way," Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar told reporters during a press conference Monday. And despite claims by Hunt's defenders that the 14-year-old child victim was "in love" and consented to the sexual acts, Florida state attorney Bruce Colton told the media, "The idea is to protect people in that vulnerable group from people who are older, 18 and above ... The statute specifically says that consent is not a defense."
The blatant hypocrisy of homosexual activists attempting to have the charges against Hunt dropped is revealing. Those defending Hunt, and pushing the homosexual agenda in general, are in essence demanding that a homosexual be treated differently under the law than a heterosexual.
This is purely an attempt to gain special treatment in the fight for "gay rights." The same can be said in the debate about marriage. Marriage, properly understood, is and has always been a covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership for life that is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring. The movement to legalize "gay marriage," is not a fight about equality-it's about redefining and destroying marriage in our society.
Besides the legal issues involved in Hunt's case, there is a separate issue of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for those who think that homosexual acts are immoral.
While there is no reported evidence that sexual orientation was a motivating factor in contacting the police, numerous media stories have published quotes from Hunt's mother attacking the parents of the 14-year-old victim as bigots against homosexuals. The message in the media's coverage of this case is clear: we must accept two teenage girls having sex as a societal good.
What if the parents were in fact opposed to their child engaging in homosexual acts based upon morals of a Christian faith? Does that make them bigots? Absolutely not.
What often gets lost in debates about homosexuality is that most Christians are opposed to all sexual activity outside of marriage. Christians believe that our God-given human sexuality is meant to be expressed as a unitive and procreative act within the marriage covenant: unitive in the bodily union of the couple, and procreative in the openness to creating new life-both made possible by the complementary physicality of men and women. The victim's parents would very likely be just as concerned if it was an 18-year-old male molesting their child.
Both the legal and cultural factors exploited by the media in Hunt's case demand of the public a renewed vigilance in defending the rule of law, and our authentic rights given to us by God. If laws meant to protect our children from sexual exploitation can be bullied out of existence, tomorrow's America will indeed be a much darker place to live.
Editor's Note: Adam Cassandra is the communications manager atHuman Life International.
