Pretty much every time the Mary Kay-Vili situation comes up I just get sad and shake my head. Because no matter what the real facts are, there has been great injustice. Either people who are mentally ill have been imprisoned, pilloried, and made pariahs, or people who are deeply and truly in love have been imprisoned, pilloried, and made pariahs. Or some of column A and some of column B. There’s little to no good in the situation and all I hope is the participants aren’t suffering too much either from their own issues or from the way society is treating them.
I hope not. Just commenting that having a spouse younger than one of your children is not necessarily cause for excessive trauma in the child. What might cause Mary Kay’s children to have problems would be the underage status of the victim.
I guess that depends on if you agree with the “can’t consent until they reach some specific date set by the legislature” or not. I’ve known people who were ready for a mature relationship long before the age of consent and I’ve known people who may never be ready regardless of their age. I realize this is a minority view and I don’t oppose age of consent statutes per se but when an extraordinary case like this one comes up, it makes me wonder. Are we really as wise as we think we are when we legislate matters of the heart?
And of course there are Libertarians who oppose age of consent statues per se and there are reasonable arguments for that as well.
Looking at CNN, the posts from regulars in the Pit as well as my own misspent youth, I would argue that we are never as wise as we think we are, period.
But when we’re talking about laws protecting minors from sexual predators in positions of power over them, such as Mary Kay, wellllll yes, I think we’re on the right track.
I don’t think that any time a parent is dating younger then their children it causes the children some discomfort. I have an ex-girlfriend who was quite bothered by her date dating a girl who was 30 when my ex was 22.
I can only imagine what knowing that you parent was having sex with someone younger then you would do when you we just starting to grasp sex yourself. Imagine what it would be like if your parents were with someone that you thought was too young for you. When I was in 7th grade 6th graders were off limits.