Teen boys must take responsibility - or be held accountable

Editor:

Last Sunday's guest column, "Who's at fault for underage teen sex?" was a sad commentary on a growing problem in an America that I readily confess I hardly recognize. I agree with the author concerning primary parental responsibility. Materialism has become the substitute for the real love and guidance that young people hunger for. Being moral in a world of moral relativism is always difficult, especially so in this world where children are bombarded with thousands of vile images in movies and television, and explicit and degrading lyrics in what passes for music these days.

When you approach adulthood, you give or deny assent to what you learned at home, in school and at church. You begin to really take at second look at what you had, and affirm or deny the traditions, beliefs and values of childhood. So, this is where I part ways with the author. The boys are at an age where they have a physical and social dominance over younger girls. If they received any guidance at home, they should just say no to the girls, if in fact it is consensual and not coerced by peer pressure, drug use, desire to be accepted, to be "cool." No doubt, the girls should learn a lesson from this, but the author wants to absolve the boys of accountability and erase the laws that label "our sons" as sexual predators.

The greater burden falls to these young men to lead, and to take the first step to break this cycle of "acceptable" abuse of young girls. They may not be "little angels," as the author sarcastically said of the girls, but society must reject this male behavior and stop the proliferation of a subculture where girls and women are expected to do such things.

Society must impose a penalty as a lesson, and a deterrence in the interests of the real little angels who inherit the actions of others, and encounter these boys on dates, and later as socially arrested juveniles in men's bodies who are driven by this early conditioning, not to mention younger boys who look to them as campus "role models."

For these young men to do any less is to become a co-conspirator in the culture of such "parties," and to learn at an early age that degrading females is somehow acceptable, and that you are blameless for a "passive" participation in destructive behavior. These would-be young men need to learn to accept personal responsibility and face the fact that actions have consequences. The author shifts the blame to Georgia laws for the lack of character in these young men. Changing laws will not, and should not happen for the greater good of society. Circumstances of each situation can always be mitigating factors in each hearing.

If young men and boys do not learn these lessons now, there is then the straight line to the future abuse of women, and to a president who just couldn't say no to his subordinate and intern he was sworn to protect in the Oval Office.

Merle Temple

Evans