Fifty percent of teens are sex offenders.

We have questions about the brouhaha over sex offenders living in public housing, near public schools, day-care centers, super markets; in fact anywhere within 100 yards of a child.

First: if you evict them from public housing (federal law prohibits level 2 and 3 sex offenders from living in Housing Authority apartments), where are they going to go? Is it  safer for them to live in apartments not maintained by the city? Will children be safer if they are homeless? Obviously not.

Second: We know this is a terribly old-fashioned thing to say, but don’t sex offenders who have paid their debt to society, have civil rights? Do we know how many of them won’t break the law again; thus, are no longer a danger to society? Take, for example, the case of ex-New York Ranger Billy Tibbetts who, in March 1994, pled guilty to one of three charges of statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl at an outdoor drinking party in Scituate, Mass., in 1992, when he was 17. When Tibbetts was with Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, he had to register with the State of Pennsylvania as a sex offender. We don’t condone teens getting shit-faced and having sex, but prosecuting them for rape seems absurd.

You can say the same for the Kansas law prohibiting virtually all sexual activity by people under age 16. The law required that health care professionals and educators must report such behavior to state authorities. Clearly, this will stop many — or all but the dumbest — teenagers from seeking contraception or treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Twelve states ban sex under a certain age — 16, 17 or 18 — regardless of the age difference between partners, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Meanwhile, other studies suggest that 30 percent of teenagers under 16 have had sexual intercourse, and an additional 20 percent are doing oral sex or genital fondling.

Under the laws of those twelve states, all of these kids are sex offenders and could, potentially, be evicted from New York City public housing.