U.S. sex crime laws were reactionary when they were created and haven’t been updated since (e.g. with any actual logic).

As teenagers, my boyfriend at the time and I were both almost arrested for kissing in the parking lot on campus. I was 16 and he was 19. They informed us that anything other than “missionary sex" was considered “sodomy" in the Great State of Georgia (and elsewhere in the South). Had I been laying on my back getting f#cked, I would have been in clear (with only my mom to answer to — which would be far worse than jail as far I was concerned at 16). Either way, whether we both got charged with sodomy or not, my then 19 yo bf was on the hook for child molestation bc I was under age while he was technically a grown-up. But since my mom wasn’t pressing charges (because our families know each other) and since I wasn’t crying rape (since it was actually consensual…and just kissing), he didn’t become a sex criminal for kissing his roughly same age girlfriend. Meanwhile, they let us both go with a warning on the sodomy thing…after which we did our kissing in a graveyard where we could have some privacy. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Looking back, considering it was the campus police (at an HBCU), I think they just wanted to scare us. Being Black in rural Georgia, it was a good warning because Confederate-sympathizing cops in the country might not be so nice. Also, since I was technically “a child" on a college campus, they probably didn’t want me getting pregnant on their watch. (I learned that at my previous college where I got expelled for being a 15-year-old (Black) girl tutoring (Black) male athletes who were 18+. They said I was a “disturbance to the natural flow of activity on campus.” Go figure).

That was all in the late nineties. I believe the sodomy laws have since been changed or removed (thanks to LGBTQ+ advocacy), but consensual teenage sex is still a sex crime in 2020. The residents of Miracle Village in Florida are all nonviolent “sex offenders” who were guilty of consensual teenage sex. I was almost one them — and for underage kissing no less!

And that’s just one of the ridiculous things that turns otherwise decent people into unfree laborers without voting rights while actual sex criminals go free, keep their jobs, get even better jobs, make even more money, and vote to maintain status quo.

Meanwhile, the U.S. legal system is so convoluted that it’s impossible to change in any efficient manner. Then again, that’s kinda the point!