The story I'm about to tell should send chills through heart of every teenager and former teenager in this country.
It's a story of a North Carolina teenage boy who was convicted of a felony for receiving oral sex from his teenage girlfriend.
And then had his conviction upheld by the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
This is the danger - the absurd danger - of criminalizing "sinful" behavior...and the danger of judges with moralistic agendas.
First, a couple
statistics.
New analyses of data from the just-released 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) by Child Trends show that among teens between the ages of 15 and 19, 55 percent of males and 54 percent of females reported engaging in oral sex in 2002 and are at risk for Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).
As you can see, most American teenagers are having oral sex. Presumably the numbers are lower for 12-14 year olds than they are for 15-19 year olds, but suffice to say that these kids in North Carolina are not the only kids in America to have oral sex.
The Facts
In the summer of 2003, two friends began dating. The boy, known in court papers as "R.L.C." was 14 at the time; the girl, known in court papers as "O.P.M.", was 12. Like all teenage couples, they looked for time they could spend alone. This could found that time when O.P.M.'s parents were bowling in Alamance County, NC...R.L.C. would come to the bowling alley to see her.
The two of them would go out to the parking lot, where they would get into O.P.M.'s mother's Suburban. They had sexual intercouse. They had oral sex. In the backseat of a Chevy Suburban in a bowling alley parking lot. To quote Meatloaf:
I'm in the back seat with my Julie like a Romeo
And the signs along the highway all said, "Caution! Kids At Play!"
And like most teenage couples, their "true love" didn't last and they broke up.
Over a year later, the girl got into a fight at school. It must have been pretty serious, because a detective from the county sheriff's office was investigating the fight. In the course of his investigation, the detective learned of O.P.M.'s sexual activity with R.L.C. The detective called R.L.C.'s mother, who accompanied her son to the sheriff's office. R.L.C. admitted to having sexual intercouse and oral sex with O.P.M. in the Suburban in the bowling alley parking lot "two or three times."
The sheriff's office passed the information along to the state Attorney General's office, which charged R.L.C. with two counts of felony crime against nature...for the oral sex.
R.L.C. was convicted and adjudicated delinquent, and placed on six months of probation.
North Carolina Law
Right now, you're probably wondering what the hell is happening in North Carolina.
In North Carolina, the age of consent is 16; any sexual activity with someone younger than 16 is a crime. It turns out that North Carolina also has a "Romeo and Juliet" law, which de-criminalizes consentual sexual activity between heterosexual teenage couples where both partners are at least 12 years old, but where they are less than 3 years apart in age.
But what the trial court and the North Carolina Court of Appeals held is that this Romeo and Juliet law, which allows teenagers to have consentual sexual intercourse with one another, does not apply to non-vaginal sex. So oral sex between teenagers is still a "crime against nature."
"Wait a minute," you cry. "Didn't the US Supreme Court rule that states couldn't criminalize sodomy?" Yes, they did, in Lawrence v. Texas, 538 U.S. 558 (2003). But Lawrence, by its own terms, only applied to activity between consenting adults. It did not apply to activity between minors, or activity in public (remember...in a parking lot).
Zealous Court of Appeals
In 2-1 decision by the North Carolina Court of Appeals, R.L.C.'s conviction was upheld. R.L.C. had argued that the general "crime against nature" statute could not be applied, now that North Carolina has adopted a much more specific set of criminal codes relating to sexual activity with minors. Furthermore, R.L.C. argued, it is patently absurd to allow consenting teenagers to have sexual intercourse, as the N.C. Legislature has done, but to criminalize non-procreative sexual activity among those same consenting teenagers. The legislature, he argued, could not possibly have intended that absurd outcome.
Not so, wrote Judge Barbara Jackson, who's personal website lists Sen. Elizabeth Dole as one of her political heroes. In North Carolina, she wrote, "the vice of buggery" has been illegal in North Carolina since at least 1819, and was illegal in the colonies and England going back to the reign of King Henry VIII in 1533.
(Nothing good can come when the judge begins her opinion with the "vice of buggery" and King Henry the VIII...)
Who cares, she wrote, that the U.S. Supreme Court decriminalized oral sex among consenting adults. It is still a crime in North Carolina if you're a minor!
And so, barring a miracle from the North Carolina Supreme Court, young R.L.C. will forever be a felon. For having received oral sex.
My own take on this is that the state has no compelling interest in ruining this kid's life. And criminalizing oral sex between consenting teenagers isn't going to stop it...or likely even reduce it.
I'm not saying it's a good thing for 12 year old girls to have oral sex with their 14 year old boyfriends. I'm just saying that to make it a crime, and to convict the boy of a felony for it...that's way over the top.
This is a case where the adults in the case showed exceedingly poor judgment. The girl's parents showed poor judgment, allowing their daughter to go sit in the Suburban with her boyfriend while they bowled. The detective showed poor judgment by passing this "crime" onto the state AG's office. The state AG showed poor judgment by pressing charges. The trial judge showed poor judgement by convicting the kid. And the Court of Appeals showed poor judgment by upholding that conviction.
This is the danger when you elect puritanical zealots with agendas to public office. This is the danger when people try and use government and its criminal laws to try and solve social problems. You can get absurd results like this...where a kid is now a felon for receiving a blow job.