Child Rape Is Never OK

There has likely never been, nor will ever be a more one-sided issue among Americans than child rape. No matter your station in life, pretty much everyone can agree that having sex with kids is not cool.

Despite not being convicted yet of any crime, alleged child rapist Jerry Sandusky’s reputed activities around the Penn State football program earned him the lowest EVER approval rating in the short history of Public Policy Polling.

Three percent of those polled seemed to approve of Sandusky. That’s even lower than Blair Thomas’ approval among Jets fans.

Eighty-eight percent had an unfavorable view of the accused pedophile. That’s pretty clear.

I’m still trying to figure out who those three percent are. Doubt I will find them at Wednesday night church.

Now, here’s where things get messy. The charges surrounding Sandusky are pretty much straight up sexual assault, or rape depending on the parlance of your jurisdiction. In West Virginia, regardless of force or coercion, pretty much no one under the age of 16 can consent to anything sexual with an adult. In his case, the age of any victim, over or under 12, would likely determine if the sexual assault charge was First or Third Degree.

Any kind of child rape is terrible. Folks seem to agree that kid touching of any sort is worthy of longish prison terms filled with ironic rape by non-children.

But your good friends at the Charleston Gazette can’t seem to come to the same conclusion. In fact, they spent nearly 500 words Tuesday morning trying to equivocate alleged discrimination against homosexual basketball players with the alleged rape of children for years at Penn State.

This seems a diversion to drum up pity for alleged victims of an unrelated civil wrong. Or just another attempt to distract from the criminal act of actual man-boy child rape.

Clearly, being benched for being gay by one’s college basketball coach is somewhere far down the list of severity behind a nine-year-old being sodomized in a shower by a middle-aged football coach.

They opined about the tragedy of the decades of failure to report allegations of sexual abuse at Penn State against children. Quoting an MSNBC talking head who cited his own abuse as a student:

Williams criticized himself, saying, “If you know about it, you’ve got a duty to tell people. And if you don’t, you’re just as bad as the person violating that kid.”

That’s fine. A fine sentiment. Like a TSA poster, telling you to “say something if you see something.”

But the Gazette doesn’t mean it. Never has. As a publication, they clearly stood with convicted rapists over the safety of our children and communities. Headlines like “Perpetrator Or Victim?” used to describe convicted rapists. Thousands of words aimed at creating pity for offenders.

When given a simple binary choice, the Gazette and its star staff just can’t say “No” to child rape. They want to explain something to you hinterlanders who don’t understand this issue as well as they do. They want to clarify rape, as if we don’t consider rape with the same finely honed minds they do in zip codes like 25311.

Maybe the question we should be asking is if we want Gazette writers anywhere near our schools & families?

I didn’t think that we’d have to have this talk with the folks at the Charleston Daily Mail. They haven’t exactly been pro-crime in my years of free reading on the InterTron.

But I’m pretty sure they reported a child rape in Monday’s paper. It was in the guise of showing just how hip and progressive as feature writers they can be.

And if you listen to the Gazette editorial page instruction, then you know how critical it is for us not to remain silent.

Read this inspirational story of a West Virginia boy completing college at the tender age of just 18. Hear about his double major. Learn about how progressive Canada is by letting him marry another man.

Hold up. Wait. Remember the law, back in the 5th graf of this blog. And remember this kid is reportedly just 18 now. And the article tells us that he met that special man in his life three years ago. And poke around a little to figure out via public records that his husband is 63 months older. And understand that any kind of sex between a 15-year old and a 20 or 21-year-old adult is illegal. It would probably be 3rd Degree Sexual Assault by definition in West Virginia.

Some may find this a cute story. But if the facts bear out, it’s a story about crime. It’s a story about adults abdicating responsibility to protect kids. Averting your eyes or mind in an attempt to be progressive should be wrong, right Gazette?

You wouldn’t let your 15-year-old daughter date someone old enough to buy beer, would you?

There’s nothing progressive about child rape.