IT'S JUST NATURE: MY RESPONSE TO THE HATERS

By Tim Rohr

It appears my Epstein post has caused a bit of a stir. First, it got me "fired" from the Guam Daily Post, and since, I've received a steady stream of hate mail and comments like the following:

bruce gulick <bruce.gulick@gmail.com>

You’re deranged, and a disgrace to the family that attempted to raise you.

May God have mercy on your soul.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "HAPPY PAGE VIEW ANNIVERSARY":

And yet NO COMMENTS. Well, none except for this one mocking you. Turns out everyone hates you. Isn’t that correct, pedophile-lover?

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "CANCELLED ":

You literally asked what the fuss was about over 14-year-old sex workers while immediately pointing out after that the age for consensual sex was at minimum 16.

there.third.below@clkdmail.com

Good afternoon,

I just came across you blog. You are definitely a pedophile and then I saw that you are involved with the Catholic Church and it all made sense.Thank you 

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "THE EPSTEIN THING":

Have you lost your fucking mind? He abused literal CHILDREN you sick sonofabitch 

No problem, the hate gives me the opportunity to go further on the issue than I could in a space-limited column.

The question is not at what age is it okay to engage in sex, and I mean sexual activity of any sort, but when is it right at all?

I hold to the Catholic position as copied here directly from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The fecundity of marriage

2366 Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is "on the side of life," teaches that "it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life." "This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."

The essential statement in this paragraph is:

"it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life."

Notice that it's not called a "sex act," but a "marriage act." Marriage is assumed as the good and natural state for "the act," and since "the act" must "remain ordered...to...procreation," marriage is assumed to be between a man and a woman.

In short, and to be blunt, sex is only "okay" when it occurs within a marriage between a man and a woman and only when sex is ordered to procreation - in other words: no contraception - thus the Church's prohibition.

This isn't my opinion. It is the universal teaching of the Catholic Church, always was and always will be, simply because it is founded in the very beginnings of humanity:

God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female* he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.* (Genesis 27-28)

This is also why even so-called "natural family planning" (periodic continence) is also wrong (a sin) when it is employed without grave reason. (Look it up.) The whole point of marriage, God's point, (properly called "the ends of marriage") is to "be fruitful and multiply." 

Argue with God. Not me.

And this is why, in my Epstein post, I mocked the whole idea of these false lines we draw which say at this age this is okay, and not at that age. As I pointed out, the ages of majority and consent are artificial government-made lines, and they are made even more irrelevant by our making contraception available and even free to minors of any age at our public health centers and even our schools. 

In fact, to further demonstrate the point, consider the following from a group organized to oppose child marriage:

Child marriage occurs when one or both of the parties to the marriage are below the age of 18. Child marriage is currently legal in 34 states, and 4 U.S. states do not require any minimum age for marriage, with a parental or judicial waiver.

Here in Guam, until 2015, the legal marrying age for a female was age 14 with parental consent, which, at the time, was pretty much the standard throughout the U.S. I'll explain why it changed in 2015 in a minute. But it's clear that our laws approved of a 14 year old girl engaging in sexual relations pursuant to the consent of the parents to marry. There was no maximum age for her husband so presumably he could be much older. 

So there's another moveable line. And if a line is moveable, it really has no meaning. Thus, my sarcastic quip in my Epstein piece: "What's all the fuss?" For anyone with a brain not yet darkened by whatever perverse prejudice may be beholding it at the moment, I believe my sarcastic quip was clear: On the one hand we self-righteously condemn a dirty old man like Jeffrey Epstein and on the other we're handing our kids contraceptives and even legislating that they be paid with tax dollars and handed out at our public health centers. 

In Guam in 2015, then-Senator Narissa Underwood introduced Bill 119-33, the "Guam Marriage Equality Act of 2015." The bill raised the marriage age to 16. The aim of the bill was not to protect 14 year old girls, but was a reaction to Guam's marriage law being caught between a rock and a hard place after SCOTUS legalized same-sex marriage. 

Since two persons of the same sex could now marry, gender language (male and female) had to be eliminated. The legal minimum age for marriage for males was already 16, so what to do with the "girls." Oh, wait a minute, there are no longer boys and girls, just partners, so the bill made it 16 for everybody. Another moveable, government-made line. 

Thus my sarcasm about our sanctimonious crusade against a single dirty old man and this meaningless appeal to something magical happening at 18 that makes it okay to have sex but not buy beer. Here is the relevant portion of Senator Underwood's Bill 119-33 which became Public Law 33-65.

The bottom line, even if you don't believe in God is that sex makes babies, or at least is designed to, even if it is only Nature's design. And the best place for those babies to grow up, prosper, and make babies of their own, i.e. the survival of our species, is in the context of a mother and a father committed to each other for life. It's just Nature. 

As a P.S., I know where the hate is coming from. It's this line: "So pedophilia was not the operative perversion. I’ll let you figure out what it was."