of course there’s differences between drinking, driving etc and sex. But I disagree w/you as to where to place the importance factor.
In addition to sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancies, and other physical issues, there’s an emotional issue as well with sex. And, since we already diminish the ability of a younger person to participate in activities where their physical being is the primary issue, why would we relegate to a lesser standard one in which not only the physical but the emotional well being is also involved?
Prior to last month, my son was not legally allowed to decide where he lived, who his doctor was, make certain kinds of purchases, work certain hours etc. Why in the world would we allow some one even younger to make potentially life altering decisions on their own?
and exactly where would you draw the line,pray tell, because you know, that some daddys do indeed rape their 10 year old daughters.
and I’d much rather make sure that we protect the young and vulnerable than worry too much about the rare instance where a 14 year old is ‘very mature’ etc.
To make the 14 year old wait 2 years/and or hold you responsible for knowing absolutely that the person you’re about to bed is able to consent is a very small price to pay for the bonus of being able to protect those who are not ‘very mature for their 10 years’.
I don’t think I’m going to buy this analogy to voting, driving, etc. Sex is a fundamental part of humanity, and should be handled differently than these other things. I’m also not completely sold on the way the US handles these other things, too (You can vote at 18 but drink at 21?), so its gonna take more than that to convince me. Frankly I find a lot of these blanket age requirements more of a “well, that sounds about right I guess” kind of legislation rather than sound, well thought out policies.
As for where the line gets drawn, well, I would definatly hesitate before making some blanket age restriction. Why does there have to be a line, anyways? For example:
Daddy rapes 10 yr. old - crime
19 yr old and 15 yr old hook up at a party - no crime
There doesn’t need to be some law saying NO SEX WITH A 10 YEAR OLD to make these judgments. Whats wrong with handling it on a case by case basis?
ps
just wanted to say thanks, wring, for giving me a crack at my first SDMB debate
"what’s wrong with handling it on a case by case basis?’
well, our courts are already clogged up as it is, and when you end up on the wrong end of the ‘but I thought it was ok’ equation, you’d not feel so good about it.
I agree that there needs to be some distinction when the two parties are contemporaries - a problem in my state for example-(the 2 year difference for example), but other than that, I have no problem w/there being a line, absolute.
But I am very leery of getting beyond that couple of years standard. Excuses I’ve heard from molesters included, of course the ‘it was consensual’, and ‘it wasn’t so bad, since her grandfather had already done it’ and ‘I’d like to point out that it was only digital penetration’.
it’s much easier for an older person to convince a younger person to do things, go places etc, and once there, not know how to get out of a situation. Issues become clouded etc.
and, again, I’m not seeing what the big sacrifice is for the older person. Insure the person is conscious, able to legally consent, and does consent. If they’re smart, they’d also get some idea of the sexual history etc (so if you’re asking some one’s HIV status, what’s the problem in checking the age while you’re at it. “oh no, that’s too personal?”)
When I buy something, and it turns out to be stolen, I can get nailed for possession of stolen property. So, when the guy turns up at your door w/a big screen TV for 10$, you’re best bet is to verifiy it’s his or not buy it. I see it as the same thing.
You’re right, wring. The laws themselves aren’t a huge problem, and I’m certainly not on some crusade to abolish them.
I just think if we had an open, realistic dialog in our society about sex - yes even with young kids - it would help a lot more than blindly applying some arbitrary age restriction, in terms of reducing undesirable sexual transgressions. Yet nobody seems to want to approach the former, whereas people have very strong (and vocal ;)) reactions to the latter.
As for the case-by-case thing, IANAL, but isn’t precedent commenly used by judges? How is this any different?
I’m not at all against having dialogs with kids about sex. I’m a mom ya know. And I recall vividly the day my son decided he was old enough to know. So I told him. “oh, gross mom, ewwww, gross.” pause. “do you think my dad does that?”
anyhow. and I also agree that our society is more than a bit odd about sex. But the answer, to me, isn’t to lower the bar and decide that ‘well, some kids are more mature than others, so we’ll just drop the age of consent down to 12’ or even ‘children are sexual beings, therefore their experimentation w/sex is perfectly fine and who better to explain it to them, than that kindly neighbor over there’.
When you’re dealing with very young children (under 10) and they experiment, it used to be called ‘playing doctor’. now it’s called CSC in the 2nd degree or some such. I think in those kinds of cases, somebody aught to be checking out the kids themselves to see if there’s history and so on, and so I wouldn’t be adverse to having some official intervention there, but I wouldn’t want them to be held til they’re adults and have to register as a molester.
I’ve already said the contemporaries in the early teens should be handled differently too.
However, I’d still be very concerned about a generality of ‘ok’ attached to people more than a couple years older having relations even w/post pubescents. With the difference in ages, there’s too much potential IMHO and IME, for the nature of the consent to be totally voluntary. Much as I also believe that a prisoner cannot consent to relations w/the guard that’s guarding them. the potential for easy abuse is too strong, and I don’t consider it a large hardship to require the occasional exception to wait a while until the situation is on a more equitable basis.
Hmm. We do have a mandatory public education system. How about somewhere early along the line, explaining to kids that “If someone does X/Y/Z to/with you, and you want them to stop, head over to the nearest police station and report them for rape.”
Thought experiment: why is child molestation illegal? Potential for authoritarian rape? Rape is already illegal. Kids can’t handle it? They are handling it. Meet some minors, sometime. It seems to me that child molestation is illegal primarily because it is universally considered distasteful, except in Japan.
P.S. If we do have a blanket age restriction, it should be a few years lower for girls, being as they hit puberty earlier than us menfolk. That is, if the law is attempting to be just, and not simply a pedantic (hah) excersize in public morality dictating law.
Thanks to people like a lot of you posting in this thread, I can’t ever hook up with that hot 35 year old in the bar, because up until about a year ago when I finally had to start shaving every other day, I looked like I was about 14 or 15, and guess what? I’m ten years older than that I’m 24 and 6/12ths. When I met my wife who actually is a couple months YOUNGER than me, she carded me, her friend asked her about it, she said she saw my ID and her friend’s response was, “The same ID he used to get in with?” (we met in a club) So basically, the average lay person has no way to really tell what age they are, or should we at 18 be subjected to classes that will teach us how to spot a fake ID? Because you can buy a fake ID on just about any corner in Times Square. I’ve seen some damn good ones, even damn good ones of a NY ID which is really fucking hard to fake. I think most of the lines of reasoning in this thread have been absolutely ludicrous. If the girl is out being a sexual predator, how can you possibly expect someone to know that they are of age? What about me who a few years ago you would have taken 8 years right off of my age upon bumping into me?
Anyway, I just thought I’d present a completely seperate perspective on this issue. A few posters have hit it on the nose, and I pretty much agree with the OP on this one.
And I gotta give props to Maeglin for his posts, I am so sick of hearing about these golden ages, because usually they were during some really awful period of time where people were persecuted for really dumb reasons like whether they had black skin, or black nipples.
I don’t see the big deal about letting minors consent to sex. I remember being 13 and knowing which things I wanted and which I didn’t. Even at 9 years old, I held meaningful opinions about things that were happening to me: “Where would you rather go to dinner?” “Where would you rather go to school?” “We think you should have braces to straighten your teeth, how do you feel about that?”
I knew what sex was, and I knew what physical discomfort was. If someone was physically doing something to me that I didn’t like, I would have realized it immediately. And so would every one of my peers.
Problem: A 20-year-old man has sex with a 13-year-old girl. Was it consensual?
Solution: Let the girl know that her answer is entirely private and that no harm will come to her from answering or testifying in court. Then ask her if the sex was consensual. If she says yes, don’t waste any more taxpayer money on the case.
Oh, but you suspect the man may have threatened her to keep quiet. So handle it exactly like any other case of suspected threats toward witnesses, don’t just assume that it happened because you don’t trust minors.
Age of Consent laws are not in place in order to punish people who aren’t psychic and can’t magically know someone’s age. They are in place to protect people that as a society we believe are in danger of being tricked or forced into doing something they aren’t ready for and can not really consent to. The law is often unfair, but I can’t think of any better way to protect those who need protection. Honestly, I think age consent laws have protected so many people that their benefits outweigh their costs. If it was a case to case thing, there wouldn’t really be protection, because a bad person would always think they could get away with it.
Having said that, the age of consent is too high, girls especially mature faster than ever, and we as a society are far too obsessed with, and scared of, sex. I think the reason kids are becoming more sexualized is, quite simply, that we are TELLING them that they are sexual! If you tell a kid that adults all want to have sex with them, and thats a bad thing (yeah, telling them its bad will make them not do it) and then you provide them with sexy attire, what exactly do you expect them to do? The age of consent should be lowered to 16, and we should stop sexualizing kids by making such a huge deal over certain pop stars. We make things abnormal by acting as though they are. Newsflash: Kids like attention. If you give attention to kids that act sexy… well, connect the dots.
Good point. Since there is no collective purpose, or at least not one we can all agree on, I am working from what I see as a possible purpose. I was speaking from my own perspective, and projecting that onto how I see the world. Strictly IMHO, of course. After all, what other perspective do I have?
I don’t expect or want teenagers to live in Candyland. I just would rather they didn’t live in brothels. And I’ll be honest with you. I have a freshman whose mother runs an honest-to-God whorehouse. Now how is that good for him?
I talk with teenagers about sex every damn day of the school year. And no, I don’t “talk at” them or lecture them. I discuss sex with them. But to be honest, after a while I just want to shake them and scream, “JUST WAIT A FEW MORE YEARS, DAMMIT!”
Well, sure, 'cause if they’re crawling, they’re in the right position.
mswas, you absolutely whooshed me with the “More weight” comment. I’m sure it’s not complimentary, but I’m afraid your meaning has eluded me.
It’s not that we don’t trust minors. We’re trying to PROTECT them when they possibly can’t protect themselves. I seem to remember a thread on this board once where the question was posited, “If you could go back in time and meet anyone, who would you meet?” I said my grandfather. I would wait until my father and all my aunts were born, and then I would stick a knife in my grandfather’s throat. I would do that, not because I don’t trust my father, and not because I think sex is dirty, but because little children don’t deserve to be raped. Of course, I can’t go back in time, and I can’t execute vigilantism in my father’s name, but by God, I can try to protect children the only way we seem to be able, and that is by having laws that restrict child molestation.
I do see consensual sex with teenagers as rape. I simply do. Like you, mr2001, I knew what sex was at a young age, and I was mature enough to make my own decisions, but in my experience teens like us aren’t the norm. We have to protect all in order to protect the vulnerable.
Consensual sex with teenagers should not be called rape. Seriously, I am amazed that anyone would devalue the term rape by applying it to genuinely consensual sex. There is consensual sex between teenage girls and much older men on TV (BTVS, for example) and there is not even an outcry because it is obviously consensual.
There are so many people who say the same thing as you. “Well, I was mature enough, but almost nobody else is.” The fact is people do mature before 18. Throughout history people have matured before 18. And physically people mature faster now than ever before!
If anything, our society tries to keep our young adults acting like kids, when they are physically not kids anymore, and this is predictably causing problems.
I think I can help out here. I believe the “more weight” comment was a line from “The Crucible”. An elderly man is being pressed to death with rocks and when his torturers tell him to confess, he instead tells them “more weight”. The point, I believe, was to highlight that the days of Puritanism you mentioned contained some horrible atrocities and therefore should not be pined for.
Consent laws do not protect everyone. They don’t protect the 18 year old who sleeps with a 15 year old. But I suppose that for every 18 year old who sleeps with someone a couple of grades below them in highschool and gets jailed, there are countless 10 year olds who are protected from being raped courtesy of the law. So I guess its ok that the 18 year old’s freedom is forfiet?
You want to know how I know I was mature enough? I knew that sex at that age was stupid, so I waited. I was in a healthy, responsible relationship at the age of 16, but he and I both knew we weren’t ready. In my eyes, that’s a mature decision. You seem to be using the word “mature” to mean “physically mature”. Most teenagers are physically mature before the age of 15, which by the way is the consensual age here in Georgia, but that doesn’t mean they are emotionally mature. For example, I have a fourteen year old student who is physically mature. He is 6’1", 160 pounds, and very attractive. The girls follow him around like little puppy dogs. Two nights ago, after a summer ball game, his mother told him he couldn’t go somewhere (with good reason), so he stomped off, got in the car, slammed the door, and pouted for twenty minutes. He may have the body of a man, but he is still a child.
And by the way, if you’re referring to Buffy and Angel, I don’t think that applies well here. I think people would probably get their feathers in a ruffle over Angel being a vamp more than him being 500+ years old. Besides, Buffy was sixteen. And in my state at least, perfectly legal.
Blackknight, thanks for clearing up that rather obscure reference.
If the eighteen year old can prove himself innocent, he has nothing to worry about. And yes, I think it’s worth it.
I look at it this way: There are tons of people who can hold their liquor and drive at the same time. But then there are those who can’t. To protect the average citizen on the road, we make it illegal for ALL people to drive under the influence of alcohol. Occasionally the law does harm people who we think should “get away with it”, but that’s the price we pay to keep as many drunks off the road as possible.
To protect the average teenager/child, we make it illegal to have sex with them all. This protects them from predators of all varieties.
I’ve seen the drink driving analogy used quite a few times in debates about sex.
It never becomes legal to drive drunk no matter how old you get, and the consent issue makes sex laws very different than anything else.
Something else to think about:
Lets say two 18 year guys pick up 2 girls at a bar. The girls look about the same age and neither cares about which guy out of the 2 they end up with. The guys don’t care either. The two couples have sex that night. It turns out that one of the girls was 15 and the other was 18. The guy that slept with the 15 year old is in big trouble, the other guy isn’t.
Was the 15 year old raped? Should the 18 year old who slept with her be punished? If so, is he being punished to set an example? Is he being punished because he might become a serial bedder of underage girls? Does he need rehabilitation?
Perhaps he should have asked for ID. Perhaps he should have got to know the girl over the course of a few weeks before deciding to have sex. Is reckless idiocy his crime because he did not make absolutely sure she was of age?
If so, should his friend also be punished for engaging in the same reckless behaviour?
Hm, good question, sweetzombiejesus. The boy in this situation has a legitimate case in stating the expectation of age of consent since they were in a bar. The boys have a responsibility to determine the age of their “dates”, and they failed to do so. Being in a bar, they foolishly assumed they were on safe ground. The girl and her friend are just as guilty as the boys, moreso even since they entrapped one of the boys, but the boys failed to follow through with the responsibilities of casual sex (strictly a moral judgment on my part, obviously not legal grounds). So if it were up to me, I would dole out similar punishments to them all.
