Sex by Salt Lake

While the nation has been watching the Catholic hierarchy decide just what is to be done with priests who molest children under their charge, an even more sordid tale of religion and sex is unfolding in Salt Lake City, Utah. And, unlike the endless wrangling over whether one-time offender priests will return to their pulpits, this case shows all of the hypocrisy our society has to offer when it comes to youths and sex.

54-year-old Tom Green would make great fodder for would-be Mormon bashers. Husband of five and father of no less than thirty-three children, Mr. Green has run afoul of the law because of his second marriage, to Linda Kunz. Mr. Green has admitted to engaging in sexual intercourse with Ms. Kunz while she was still a minor; the couple wed in 1986 in New Mexico, when Ms. Kunz was just thirteen. On this basis, Mr. Green has been charged with conspiracy to rape a minor. He has also been charged with four counts of bigamy.

There is little evidence to suggest that the Green-Kunz marriage has been anything but happy. As Ms. Kunz tells The New York Times, "It was my idea to be married to him. It wasn't Tom taking advantage of me."

Nonetheless, what is most striking in this case is the existence of the GreenñKunz marriage in the first place. One has to wonder at the sanity of a legal system that will allow someone to marry a person so young that he is not legally permitted to sleep with her.

The phenomenon of extremely youthful marriages is nothing new. In the 1950s, singer Jerry Lee Lewis caused international scandal when he wed his thirteen-year-old cousin. But one has to be aghast that scandals of this sort have not caused the public to demand major revisions of the laws concerning marriage and divorce in this country.

While one might be tempted to sneer at the Green-Kunz marriage as simply a bit of Utah nuttiness, similarly youthful marriages may take place right here in New York. New York state law sets the minimum age for marriage at 14, and laws in many other states allow marriage of teenagers.

Such laws seem a throwback to a medieval ordering of society. Implicit in these laws are a number of assumptions about the role and nature of women. It is safe to assume that these laws were written at a time when women lacked other forms of financial protection and parents often married off their daughters as a way of providing them security.

The discrepancy between laws governing statutory rape and laws permitting early marriage say a great deal about the current status of women in American society. On the one hand, statutory rape laws reinforce the idea that young women need protection from the designs of powerful, older men who might hurt them. On the other, laws permitting girls -- and I mean girls, not women -- to wed as young as fourteen reinforce the idea that women cannot survive without the financial security of marriage.

Neither of these ideas reflects the current reality of American women. At a time when teenage girls can look forward to becoming doctors, lawyers, and journalists, when two women serve on the Supreme Court and countless others hold high positions in government, our laws enshrine a double standard regarding the status of a teenage girl.

Moreover, the current system of laws regarding youthful marriages places marriage in a rather odd position. Under the current system of laws, it was legal for Mr. Green to wed Ms. Kunz when she was 13 -- it just was not legal for him to sleep with her. What, then, is the status of such an unconsummated marriage? In many traditional societies, failure to consummate a marriage rendered the marriage null and void. Thus, our laws permit the creation of the shell of amarriage between, say, a 14-year-old girl and a man of 30, but not a real, functioning marriage. What social purpose this serves is beyond my comprehension.

Much more consistent, and much more socially useful, would be a single set of standards regarding both statutory rape and marriage. The law should set a single age (say 18) as the legal age of consent for both sex and marriage. Such a revision of marital laws would do a great deal to clear up the confusing status teenagers often have under the law.J.R. Wilheim is a Columbia College majoring in religion and history.