Is Puritanism Dead?

The reaction by many including the family of the victim and the state of New Hampshire in the case of alleged prep school rapist Owen Labrie is beyond sanctimonious.   The parents of the victim take no responsibility for raising a daughter who sneaks off to a secluded room for a tryst.  The victim, who is among the nation's brightest and most precocious,  takes no responsibility for sneaking off to a secluded room for a tryst.   The State of New Hampshire, which does practically nothing about the epidemic of teenage sex going on within its borders,  wants us to believe that its prosecution of Labrie, who is barely old enough under the law to be tried as an adult, isn't arbitrary and capricious.   Elite St. Paul's School, which left the young man and women unsupervised, want us to believe that the school is in no way culpable for the teenagers' behavior, and failing to impress upon their students, including the youngest women, that any contact with someone under 16 is criminal.  The State of New Hampshire takes no responsibility for failing to ensure that schools within its borders supervise their young students and prevent teenage sex.   Misandrist activists want young men to take exclusive blame for teenage sex and pretend,  thousands of years of evidence to the contrary, that sexual encounters are part of the rational human experience where checklists for takeoff can and must be maintained just like those used by those piloting 747 aircraft.   Who said Puritanism was dead.

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Wouldn't it be fun to hook up all the activists, journalists, head masters and parents to a lie detector and ask them if they ever had sex with anyone under 16.  You might be in trouble if you kissed someone under 16.  If your hands wandered at all you committed a misdemeanor, at least in New Hampshire.  If you went all the way, congratulations, you're a rapist.  The law makes no distinction between boy and girl perpetrators, by the way.

New Hampshire's law, for example:

http://doj.nh.gov/criminal/victim-assistance/documents/sexual-assault-protocol.pdf

Felonious Sexual Assault (“FSA”) (RSA 632-A:3 ) includes the offense often referred to as the “statutory rape law,” which involves sexual penetration of a person between the ages of 13 and 16 when the age difference between the actor and the other person is 4 years or more.  The legal age of consent in New Hampshire is 16.  It also applies when a person is in a position of authority over another and coerces that other person to engage in sexual contact with the actor or with him/herself in the actor’s presence.

Felonious Sexual Assault includes, but is not limited to:

When the defendant subjects a person to sexual contact and causes serious personal injury to the victim under any of the circumstances named in RSA 632-A:2 (the aggravated felonious sexual assault statute mentioned above).   [I.E: penetration:  oral, anal, vaginal]

N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 632-A:4(I) (Sexual assault) states, 
I. A person is guilty of a class A misdemeanor under any of the following circumstances:
                                                      
(a) When the actor subjects another person who is 13 years of age or older to sexual contact under any of the circumstances named in RSA 632-A:2 [Aggravated felonious sexual assault].  (b) When the actor subjects another person, other than the actor’s legal spouse, who is 13 years of age or older and under 16 years of age to sexual contact where the age difference between the actor and the other person is 5 years or more.  (c) In the absence of any of the circumstances set forth in RSA 632-A:2, when the actor engages in sexual penetration with a person, other than the actor’s legal spouse, who is 13 years of age or older and under 16 years of age where the age difference between the actor and the other person is 4 years or less. 

N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 632-A:1(IV) defines “sexual contact” as “the intentional touching whether directly, through clothing, or otherwise, of the victim’s or actor’s sexual or intimate parts . . . . Sexual contact includes only that aforementioned conduct which can be reasonably construed as being for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification.”