I agree on all points.
However you framed the question in moral terms, whereas the issue is about the law.
And it's hard or even impossible to define a uniform from which age a person is able to fully appreciate the consequences of or make an informed voluntary decision to engage in sexual activities.
So arbitrary age limits have been set for that. And it's clearly puzzling that the age of consent is 13 in Spain (lowest in Europe and raised from 12 in 1999) and 18 in other places.
A person can therefore be a paedophile in the UK but not in Spain for having sex with the one and same person. A monster and a perfectly normal individual at the same time, just by traveling a few kilometers.
One has to admit that this doesn't make much sense.
/edit: Oh, and before I start getting death threats for being a paedophilia supporter (which I'm not), I would just like to stress that my issue is not paedophilia: it's hypocritical and arbitrary laws.
(, Fri 9 May 2008, 18:18, Share, Reply)
Fine, lets make the issue about the law.
Different nations and cultures have different laws to reflect the values and traditions upheld by those nations. As a result, by travelling from country to country it is unavoidable that certain laws will conflict or contradict laws of other nations. This does not make them hypocritical. It just means that a specific culture regards a certain issue differently to another, a concept that I suppose helps define one culture from another.
The fact is that as a member of the British public this man was subjugated under British laws, morals and values of which he willingly broke. The fact that he wouldn't have been seen to have been doing anything wrong in Spain is completely invalid as an argument since he wasn't in Spain.
While I accept your view that "it's hard or even impossible to define a uniform from which age a person is able to fully appreciate the consequences of or make an informed voluntary decision to engage in sexual activities" and that it is ludicrous that hetersexual and homosexual ages of consent are not the same, you must admit that the thirteen year age of consent in Spain seems very low. For my mind I would like to think that 16 is round about the right age.
I think it would be fare to say that a lot of early teens are confused about their sexuality. Does this make it right for a preditory old man to molest them to see if they like it? Now I'm a great believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt. I think that once you've served the sentence for your crime you should be free to get on with your life. However, this man has clearly no remorse for what he did, and evidently believes that he did nothing wrong.
He in his own words would have you believe that he is making a valid point about the political hypocracy surrounding homosexuality by highlighting the homophobia suffered by Oscar Wilde. Quite how he expects to do this by dressing like Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen I've no idea but is creating a song that trivialises his own sexual abuse of children the way to do that?
(
Furness, Fri 9 May 2008, 19:13,
Share,
Reply)
The problem I have
is that we say that there is a specific developmental age below which a person suffers psychological damages from a sexual encounter, and hence makes every sexual activity with a person below that age immoral (as one person is gaining pleasure at the cost of another). Because of this, we establish a law to protect people below that age.
All this fine with me.
Except that we obviously have no idea what precise chronological age corresponds to this developmental age or how this might work for different people.
So we establish an arbitrary age, mostly based on our personal perception and morals. And this is what I object to. If there is a scientific basis for it: I'm the first to back it. If it's someone's ideas or morals, I don't think it should interfere with how consenting people interact with each other.
And willingly breaking morals or values (and even stupid laws, think homosexuality) is all fine with me, as long as it doesn't cause or potentially cause harm to other people.
For the rest, I agree with you that 13 seems very low (16 seems reasonable) but it's only my impression and it still would be nice to have a more objective view.
Molesting and exploiting are crimes, independently of age.
(, Fri 9 May 2008, 20:07, Share, Reply)
But then...
I dont think age necessarily plays a factor in the psychological damages suffered from a sexual encounter. Rape victims for example suffer long term psychological problems regardless of their age. The fact is that everyone is their own individual and as such develop at different times.
There are admittedly many 14 year olds who feel that they are mature enough and are ready to have sex, but the fact is that there are also many that aren't. The law as an ideal is meant to be there to protect the innocent and as such the focus should always be on protecting those that aren't ready. Through this notion it has been decided that 16 is an age where the vast majority of people are ready to experiment sexually. That isn't to say that many aren't ready before that age, but in order to protect the ones that aren't a proper limit has to be set. I'd love to know what your alternative to that would be. By your logic it would seem that if an 11 year old decided they were ready and had gone through puberty, then he or she would be fare game. After all, if theres grass on the wicket, lets play cricket.
At the end of the day we could argue about the pedantics of the law forever and a day, and probably never agree. The fact is an old man is singing about how he loves to bugger children and sees nothing wrong in doing so, a mind set that I find morally reprehensible
(
Furness, Sat 10 May 2008, 0:56,
Share,
Reply)