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Embryonic Stem Cell Research Again
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You've Come a Long Way, Baby
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You Gotta Kill Them.  How Else Are They Going To Learn?
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What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
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The Unknown God
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Religious Persecution in the U.S.?
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Why Attend Mass Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull the Plug?
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Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal if...
Get Rid of that Worthless Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues Prior to Voting

by Monsignor James C. Brunner

Faith Points

Victimless Crimes

             According to libertarians certain sins are victimless crimes. These include same sex marriage, consensual sex, consumption of alcohol by minors, marijuana usage, and pornography among others. I want to look at violations of biblical sexual morality and suggest that they produce many victims although it is not always possible to give an accurate body count.

             Promiscuous consensual sex is the source of many sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), some of which kill and many shorten life. Every year 12 million Americans acquire STDs with 60% of the cases occurring among teenagers. These include:

 (a)    Chlamydia. There are 4 million cases annually. 1 of 4 American women is infected with it. This disease, often without symptoms, leads to pelvic inflammatory disorders (PIDs). 30% of infertility in women is related to preventable STDs. The cost of treating PID is estimated to be $4 billion annually.

 (b)   Gonorrhea. It also causes PID, infertility, ectopic pregnancy, which has increased fivefold in the last 20 years. 75% of cases are found in women aged 15 to 29.

 (c)    HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Worldwide 1 of every 100 sexually active persons is infected with the virus. There are 16,000 new cases every day. AIDS killed 2.3 million in 1997 including 460,000 children less than 15 years of age. AIDS is the leading cause of death for all Americans ages 23-44. In the US 1 AIDS-related death occurs every 15 minutes and someone is infected with AIDS every 13 minutes. 1 in 250 Americans is infected with HIV. The number of HIV infected teenagers in the U.S. doubles every month.

 (d)   Human Papillomavirus (HPV). 50% to 75% of the sexually active acquire HPV. It leads to cervical cancer which kills 4,500 women each year. It has also been connected to head and neck cancer.

 (e)    Syphilis. It leads to blindness, heart disease, insanity, tumors, and death. There are 3,000 cases of congenital syphilis each year causing up to 1,200 infant deaths.

 (f)     Hepatitis B. There are 70,000 to 160,000 infections per year. It causes cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver, liver failure, and death.

             In the 1960s there were two STDs, gonorrhea and syphilis. Today there are about 25 and 1 in 5 Americans between the ages of 15 and 55 has a viral STD. The number is 1 in 4 if bacterial infections are included.In the US approximately 1.3 million abortions are performed every year. When libertarians speak of premarital sex as a victimless crime they are forgetting about somebody. Not only are the unborn children the victims but so are the mothers who are beset by psychological problems. The suicide rate after an abortion was three times the general suicide rate and six times that associated with birth. The rate for women following a live birth was 5.9 per 100,000; following miscarriage 18.1; following abortion 34.7. The risk of breast cancer in women who abort is twice that of women who do not. Legal abortion is reported as the fifth leading cause of maternal death in the United States , though it is recognized that most abortion related deaths are not officially reported as such.

            Other victims of sexual immorality are teenagers who become pregnant. In the US 11% of teenage girls become pregnant each year. Every 64 seconds a baby is born to a teenage mother. 80% of these will live in poverty, dependent on welfare payments at a cost of $7 billion a year. The US spends $40 billion a year to help families that began with teenage births. You can number American taxpayers as victims of immoral sex perpetrated by teens who have the capacity to reproduce but not to support their progeny. Nearly three-quarters of all unmarried teen mothers go on welfare within 5 years of the birth of their first child. It is unlikely that these mothers will continue their education. 36% do not receive a high school diploma or GED. The US has 900,000 teen pregnancies a year, the highest rate in the fully industrialized world. The rate is nearly double that of Britain , 4 times that of France and Germany , and 10 times that of Japan . The growth in single-parent families is the most important reason for increased poverty among children. An obvious way to reduce poverty is to remove teenage pregnancy. These babies start life with handicaps. They receive insufficient health care, inadequate parenting, often fall victim to abuse and neglect, and typically have poor school performance.

            Satisfying sexual impulse also leads to pornography with its own roster of victims. The first victims are the women, mainly, who are degraded by having their most personal selves displayed like meat in a butcher shop. Pornography encourages behavior that leads to promiscuity. It promotes the allure of adultery and prostitution and can contribute to divorce. Pornography can become addictive. Over time addicts require more explicit and deviant materials for sexual stimulation. The sensitivity of normal modesty is removed and what was once perceived as gross becomes commonplace. There is a tendency to act out behaviors viewed in pornography. Persons who say that they are not affected by pornography are either lying or they are not wired up correctly. Dr. Mary Anne Layden, director of education, University of Pennsylvania Health System , pointed out, “I have been treating sexual violence victims and perpetrators for 13 years. I have not treated a single case of sexual violence that did not involve pornography.” Child and adult pornography are frequently used by pedophiles to lure children. The idea is to make sexual behavior look acceptable to the victim. Victims of child pornography are scarred for life and perpetually fearful that their photographs are still available in such venues as the internet or other outlets for pornography.

            Prostitutes are also victims of sexual immorality although it is an allegedly voluntary activity. That is not always true. Often girls are kidnapped or lured from foreign nations and threatened with deportation if they refuse to continue in prostitution. Prostitutes are often victims of violence. Prostitution dens are distribution centers for STDs and so create other sexual victims.

             Immoral sex is not a victimless crime. It has millions of victims. To put this into perspective, during 2001 there were 37,795 automobile fatalities in the US . This is certainly a disturbing number and efforts to lower it are worth while. The numbers of persons killed in traffic accidents pale in comparison with the widespread slaughter of immoral sex. A better name for casual sex is casualty sex. These millions of casualties could be avoided by following the Bible: abstinence from sex by the single and fidelity in marriage to uninfected partners. Unfortunately appeals to eliminate immoral sex and its deadly consequences are looked upon as entirely unrealistic.

            For many this cure is worse than the malady. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton it is not that the cure has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been tried, found hard, and not wanted. God does not place restrictions on sex to make us miserable but to make us happy. We make ourselves miserable by violating the restrictions. The Bible challenges us to choose between life and death. Through immoral sex we take what God designed for life and choose not just spiritual but physical death.

 (Printed June, 2003)