Sex consent debate fueled by emotion

By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Editor

Some day, someone will produce a Ph.D. thesis about the great sexual consent debate of 2001.

It is a classic study on how emotion, raw politics and reason become so entangled that no one is able to successfully sort it all out.

For instance, most people assume that the debate was over the question of raising the "age of consent" in Hawai'i from 14 to 16.

It wasn't. Well, that was what all the yelling has been about, but that is not what the bill passed by the Legislature and vetoed by Gov. Cayetano would have done.

Would that it were so simple.

The bill that passed the Legislature — unanimously — did not simply raise the age of consent from 14 to 16.

In fact, it left the age of consent (the age at which a minor is, by law, considered old enough to consent to sex) at 14 when the partners were relatively of the same age — within five years of each other. It did raise the age of consent to have sex with anyone — no matter how old — to 16.

But wait. That's not quite true. The proposed law would have allowed 14-year-olds to have sex with older people, but only if they were married.

In short, the proposed law created a tangled web of complexity. No wonder people tended to fall back on pure emotion.

Step back for a moment and ask yourself what the law was attempting to deal with. Was it the relatively rare instance of an older "predator" taking advantage of a compliant youngster for sexual purposes?

Or was it a response to the fairly universal feeling that 14 is simply too young an age to be engaged in sex?

Lawmakers weren't sure. The bill itself calls for a huge study of the matter, in which prosecutors would collect statistics on criminal cases pursued under the new law; social workers and others would be asked to review its effectiveness; other jurisdictions would be studied to see what their experience has been, and so on. The result of that study would be turned over to the Legislature "for the purpose of assisting the legislature in developing social policy on the age of consent . . ."

Well, yes. But does it make sense to pass the law first and then decide what "social policy" should be on this delicate matter?

It is precisely these complexities, as well as concerns raised by police, prosecutors and social workers, that kept the Legislature from delving into the age-of-consent issue in the past.

What changed this time around? Nothing, other than a newly robust Republican minority in the House that had the political clout to force issues out of the closet. And what an issue! No one wants to be seen as soft on the issue of teenage sex, let alone be in favor of laws that make things easy for dirty old men.

So, backed into a corner by the House Republicans, who knew they could either win a change in the age-of-consent law or put the Democrats into an awkward and embarrassing position, the Legislature acted.

The research proposed in the bill makes good sense. There are plenty of questions to be answered and issues to be resolved. Now the Legislature has a chance to get that study accomplished, before it rushes into remaking the law.