Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court struck down a 170-year-old law that made it a crime for unmarried people to have sex.

The ruling was a result of a case filed by the mother of a girl who had had sex with her 16-year-old boyfriend in her mother's house.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Norman Fletcher stated:

"Our opinion simply affirms that ... the government may not reach into the bedroom of a private residence and criminalize the private, noncommercial, consensual sexual acts of two persons legally capable of consenting to those acts..."

In 1998, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the state's sodomy law, ruling that it violated the Georgia Constitution's right-to-privacy guarantee.

PV Is Just A Bit Confused: According to our understanding, the so-called "age of consent" in Georgia is 16. Age of consent is the threshold age below which sex with a female could be considered "statutory rape."

However, according to what we read in OCGA ("Official Code Of Georgia, Annotated") Section 16-6-1G, this is the law governing the "age of consent:"

*** CODE SECTION *** 12/03/01

16-6-1.

(a) A person commits the offense of rape when he has carnal
knowledge of:

(1) A female forcibly and against her will; or

(2) A female who is less than ten years of age.

Carnal knowledge in rape occurs when there is any penetration of the
female sex organ by the male sex organ. The fact that the person
allegedly raped is the wife of the defendant shall not be a defense
to a charge of rape.

According to our understanding of this law, a female appears to be able to "consent" to have sex if she is above the age of 10-years-old. Again, we are not lawyers. But, by implication of what this law states, if a girl is less than 10, it IS statutory rape, and if she is 10 or older, it is not necessarily so.

We'd like some of those so-called "family-oriented" legislators in the Georgia Legislature to please explain to us when and how this law got rewritten to state that 12-year old girls could consent to have sex under Georgia law?

PV Offers An Aside: Currently, we know Liberal Dimocrat Jim Martin is under consideration for re-hire by the Perdue Administration to head-up Georgia's Department of Human Resources. In 1999, while Jim Martin was still in the State House, he offered a bill to then lower the age of consent down to 12 years-old. Somehow, in the interim between 1999 and December 2001, the age of consent has now been lowered to less than 10 years old.

We hope the Perdue Administration takes a good look at Martin. AND, we hope they disregard the AJC's Jim Wooten going all-out in support of Mr. Martin. Wooten has taken-up editorial space on two occasions to lobby for Martin retaining his position. We advise against Wooten's recommendations.

Surely there can be found someone else to be in charge of this state agency who didn't spend his/her time trying to lower the statutory age of rape in the state.