Laws relating to fornication remain on the statute books of about 10 US states and the District of Columbia

By IOL Cairo staff

GEORGIA, United States, January 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – One of the 10 states in America that still had laws prohibiting sexual relations outside marriage abolished its laws Tuesday, January 14.

The BBC’s online news service reported that the Supreme Court in the American state of Georgia abolished the 170 year old law after the conviction of a 16-year-old youth found having sex with his girlfriend in the bedroom of her home.

The judge, Chief Justice Norman Fletcher, said “the government may not reach into the bedroom of a private residence and criminalize the private, non-commercial, consensual sexual acts of two persons legally capable of consenting to those acts,” the BBC reported.

The couple were discovered engaging in sexual intercourse by the girl's mother in September 2001, the BBC said adding that “according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, the mother of the unnamed girl reported the incident to her daughter’s probation officer, who brought the charges.”

Jesse McClure was ordered to pay a fine and write an essay about why he should not have had sex and to that he responded that “it was none of the court’s business.”

Laws relating to fornication remain on the statute books of about 10 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, the BBC said.

On its website the World Health organization said that “the lives of millions of adolescents worldwide are at risk because they do not have the information, skills, health services and support they need to go through sexual development during adolescence and postpone sex until they are physically and socially mature, and able to make well-informed, responsible decisions.”

According to the organization, the main issues in adolescent sexual and reproductive health are sexual development and sexuality (including puberty), sexually transmitted diseases/ HIV/AIDS and unwanted and unsafe pregnancies.

The organization has a common agenda advocating specific measures to prevent unsafe sex and early childbearing among adolescents including creating a safe and supportive environment through promoting delayed marriage and childbearing, expanding access to education and training, and providing income-earning opportunities. 

In addition it advocates providing information and skills (life and livelihood) so that adolescents are better equipped to make good decisions. 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a considerable proportion of adolescents and youth in the developing world engage in premarital sexual activities that tend to be unsafe.

A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that an increased number of girls are at risk of dating violence, pregnancy, substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, eating disorders and suicide.

Four thousand girls were surveyed in the Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior  Survey ‘97 and ‘99 and Dr. Jay G. Silverman of Harvard School of Public Health in Boson commented that “tremendous numbers of young women suffer in silence, not telling anyone out of fear or shame or not wanting to lose the relationship. Even for those young victims who choose  to peak out, there are very few specialized services.”

Since the 1960s, premarital sex has become a growing phenomenon- delaying marriage, playing a role in its breakdown and contribution towards the increase in dysfunctional families.

In his book The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, said:

“Among the appetites, which an individual must satisfy for his personal survival is that of food and drink. The sexual appetite, however, is for the purpose of the survival of the species. Sex is a strong driving force in the human being, which demands satisfaction and fulfillment.

“When Islam prohibits something, it closes all the avenues leading to it. This is achieved by prohibiting every step and every means leading to that which is haram.

“Accordingly, whatever excites passions, opens ways for illicit sexual relations between a man and a woman, and promotes indecency and obscenity, is haram.

“What Islam prohibits in the sphere of sex includes looking at a member of the opposite sex with desire; for the eye is the key to the feelings, and stare is a messenger of desire, carrying the message of fornication or adultery.

“The optimum approach that should be conducted in this respect is to regulate the satisfaction of this urge, allowing it to operate within certain limits, neither suppressing nor giving it free rein.

“This is the stand of the revealed religions, which have instituted marriage and have prohibited fornication and adultery.

“In particular, Islam duly recognizes the role of sexual desire and facilitates its satisfaction through lawful marriage. Just as it strictly prohibits sex outside marriage and even what is conducive to it such as kissing, hugging, cuddling as well as other premarital relations, it also prohibits celibacy and the shunning of women.

“Unquestionably, it is only through a stable family that mercy, love, affection, and the capacity to sacrifice for others develop in a human being’s emotions, without which a cohesive society cannot come into being.”