The stand was well away from the cashier or any one else who could see me. Once or twice a week I would go over to it and sneak a look at one of the fold-outs. One day I got daring and decided to take one of these fold-outs. Well, it worked and I didn't get caught. I continued this until I had four or five fold-outs. It was quite a collection I thought. One of the times I can remember taking a whole magazine out of the store in a grocery bag. This really added to my library. Whenever I was alone I would take these out of my hiding place and look at them, I can remember becoming stimulated.
Adolescent Sexual Encounters and the Law
The law (including sex law) is also an adult-sponsored institution with which
adolescents may come in contact. Juveniles who are held to be guilty of a sex offense
are often not charged with a specific sex conduct violation. The categories
"ungovernable," "loitering," "immoral or indecent conduct," "runaway," and similar
designations frequently are the preferred charges, particularly if the court has a
policy to avoid stigmatizing the individuals with a sex offense. The statutes dealing
with sex behavior are phrased in such general and inclusive terms that any sexual act
or conduct can be defined as a delinquent offense (Reiss, 1960, p. 311).
While petting as a specific type of activity is not legally proscribed, many of its
particular techniques are punishable as misdemeanors or more serious crimes. (For a
detailed review of the legal status of petting, see Kinsey, 1953, p. 261-263, and Reiss,
1960. The following is based on Kinsey.) When a minor is involved, petting may be
prosecuted as juvenile delinquency or as contributing to the delinquency of a minor. In
a court handling girls between sixteen and twenty-one years of age in one of our large
cities, Kinsey reported many cases in which evidence of genital manipulation in
petting was taken as sufficient grounds for judging the girl to be "morally depraved,"
and grounds for committing girls to institutions for relatively long terms.
Most of the cases that get into court are instituted by irate parents or outraged neighbors. When
petting occurs in some public place, as in a moving picture theater, on a beach, or in a
car parked on some public highway, the police are more likely to take action. In most
instances they simply put an end to the activity; in some instances they may make an
arrest on a charge of public indecency or disorderly conduct. The charges are likely to
be more severe if genital manipulation or mouth-genital contacts are involved; the
latter can be penalized as felonies in most of the states.
A statute that prohibits "a private grossly indecent heterosexual act," or "any lewd or carnally indecent act in
private," for example, could be used to convict someone for an oral-genital "offense."
Both of these could be interpreted to include genital manipulation among the
unmarried, and provide maximum penalties of five and three years respectively.
Indiana and Wyoming have treated sodomy as any enticing, alluring, instigating, or
aiding of a person under twenty-one to commit masturbation, and this has been
interpreted to include "any immoral act of sexual gratification which has a tendency to
corrupt." In Texas, permitting a person under sixteen to handle or fondle one's genital
parts is sodomy, and in Oregon in addition to mouth-genital and anal contacts, any
"perverse" genital contact is a crime against nature. In Arizona in addition to oral and
anal intercourse, any body contact intended to arouse the sexual desires of a person in
"any unnatural" manner is a felony.
Although historically sodomy was confined to anal
intercourse, today in most states some or all forms of mouth-genital contacts are
specifically forbidden, either as part of the sodomy statutes or in separate statutes.
Mouth-genital contacts have been considered to be "unnatural" or "perverse" or
"lascivious" or "grossly indecent" conduct under statutes forbidding such conduct.
How does this legislation in regard to petting affect youth in the United States?
Few youth are aware of any legal question involved in petting. The norms, either adult
or youth norms, rather than the legal mandates, provide whatever restraint there is
on the petting behavior of adolescents.