News item from the Associated Press, July 4, 1999: A ring of children as young as 7 in a small Pennsylvania community taught each other to have sex, and a half-dozen of them have been charged in juvenile court. The children, all students at Northeastern Middle School or York Haven Elementary School, hid their activities from adults but readily answered questions asked by police. Their candor was all the more troubling, said Newberry Township Police Chief Bill Myers.

"These kids knew that what they were doing wasn't right, but they didn't know it was as bad as it was," Myers said. "There was a naivete about the legal and moral consequences." Six children have been charged in juvenile court on charges including rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and indecent assault, Myers said.

Hmmmmm. Interesting and disturbing story.

The kids knew what they were doing wasn't right, but they didn't know how bad it was. ...

Well, how bad is it?

I mean, really? How bad is it?

I hope everyone reading this column agrees with me that it is very wrong. It is wrong for children to have sex. It's wrong for people to have sex before marriage. It's wrong for married people to have sex outside of marriage. It's wrong for people to have sex with animals. It's wrong for people of the same gender to have sex with each other under any circumstance.

It's wrong. It's all wrong.

Why didn't these kids know how wrong it is? For the same reason most kids in America today don't know. They've never been told -- at least not in any authoritative and meaningful way.

In fact, kids in America are told in a thousand ways every day that it's not so wrong. They're told in movies. They're told in television shows. They're told in popular music. They're even told in school.

American kids may not know how to read or write very well, they may not know their arithmetic or their history, but they know a lot about sex -- mechanically speaking. That's what sex is, according to our popular culture and our government educational system. It's not about love. It's not about marriage. It's not about intimacy between a man and a wife. It's not about affection and emotions. It's not about a lifelong commitment or devotion. It's not about reproduction. It's about a physical act. They know how to put a condom on a banana. After all, what else is there to know about sex?

And then we wonder why kids sexually victimize other kids.

If, indeed, we all agree that it is wrong for an 11-year-old kid to have sex with a 7-year-old or a 16-year-old to have sex with an 11-year-old, just what are the rules? Would it be OK for two 11-year-olds to have sex? Two 7-year-olds? Would it be better if two 16-year-olds were having sex? Are they mature enough to make intelligent decisions with long-term consequences?

That's really the trouble. Americans will be appalled at the story from Newberry, Pa., because of the age of the perpetrators and the victims, but most won't see that such developments are the natural consequences of a society whose rules have become suggestions, whose code of morality has become outdated guidelines, whose God has become the police state.

Did you notice how the kids came clean with the police? They recognize the "ultimate authority" when they see it. They are kids and they want very much to be told what's right and what's wrong, but no one is telling them. Instead they're taught that God is taboo to talk about in school or among polite company. The only law that counts is government law. They had some vague idea that what they were doing was wrong and smart enough to know their parents would probably object, but they were a little surprised that what they were doing might actually be criminal behavior.

There was a little naivete about the legal and moral consequences, said the police chief.

Government is basically amoral. Even the best of them can't instill in people the desire to do what's right. That must come from the church, from the synagogue, the home. This is the reason the state is totally unequipped to educate children or adults. Governments can propagandize, indoctrinate, brainwash, but they cannot educate because the secular state is amoral -- even a secular state built on the vestiges of a Judeo-Christian value system. About all government can do effectively is to rule by terror, by force, by threat of violence -- which is why we must never turn to government to solve our problems except as a last resort.

Once that Mosaic law, handed down from Mount Sinai, is no longer accepted as coming from a higher authority than man, then the only thing that really counts is: "What can I get away with?"

Let's face it, folks. There's only one reason this kind of behavior or the kind of behavior we witnessed a few months ago in Littleton, Colo., are wrong. And that's because God's law says it's wrong. Once we take God's law out of the equation, then the world becomes a moral cesspool where it is impossible to judge behavior -- even our own.

I predict the behavior in Newberry, Pa., will shock Americans -- for about five minutes. It will get some attention on talk radio programs. It may be the topic of some shows on cable TV for a few days. There may even be a speech or two on the floor of Congress. And then it will be forgotten. Or, worse yet, maybe we'll find out, as I suspect, that the stuff going on in Newberry is not really that much different from activity going on in towns large and small all over America.

How did the police even get involved? They learned about the sexual abuse after a sleepover 16th birthday party for one girl that was attended by another 16-year-old girl, two 11-year-old boys and a 13-year-old boy, say police.

"Supposedly what happened was they were playing spin the bottle, and things got beyond that," the detective on the case related. "The story was the bottle pointed toward one of the males, and he had to have intercourse with one of the girls. Well, I guess this turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg."

After the birthday party, one of the 16-year-olds learned that one of the 11-year-old boys had been molesting a 7-year-old neighbor and told the victim's mother about it.

Interesting again. The 16-year-old's moral code told her it was OK for 16-year-olds to have sex with 11-year-olds, but not for 11-year-olds to have sex with 7-year-olds. So the 16-year-old blew the whistle on the young boy. But guess who got punished with a rape conviction? You guessed it. The 16-year-old girl. Bet she was surprised.

"I don't think [she] realized just how much trouble she was going to be in," the girl's mother said.

Yeah, I guess not. Gee, I wonder why?