Quote:
Originally posted by Spitman
That aside, what is the purpose of having an agreed age of consent? I suggest that the most accepted reason is to protect younger people from predatory older people. In that case we need laws based on age difference and not primarily the age of the younger party. A maximum age difference of 5 years is probably about right where the older party is over a minimum age such as 18. I think the law should focus on adults who abuse children.
That is a two-way street you walk, though. Because there are plenty of actively sexual 13 and 14 year olds out there that look for 18 and 19 year old boyfriends, because they want someone more mature and able to be sexually stimulated for more than three minutes at a time.
Predators do not only come in the form of 'dirty old men'.
Quote:
Originally posted by le forgeron
[*]At what age is a person sexually considered an adult?
See next question, but a sexually active person should (as per RFC standard, aka MUST) be mentally active. (at least conscious of the implications). Moreover, it should be matured enough, from a physical point of view. This puts the lower limit to 16, at least.
[*]At what age is a person mentally considered an adult?
How does the mental of a person relate to his/her age ?
What about trisomic and supergenius ?
What is an adult ? If the answer is 'a person responsible and accountable for his/her acts',
A girl was considered sexually an adult, and still is in many cultures, once she has her first period. In many cultures, a girl that has her period is legally able to marry, have sex and produce children.
It's not a bad system, if you approach it from a non-western way of thinking. That measn marriages can be arranged, bloodlines futhered and bred for certain trait and the society in which the system is set down for continues to flourish.
The problem with it, these days, is that it's unnecessary. The world suffers from so much overpopulatioin that continuing your society and your culture aren't issues much anymore. Arranged marriages are nice, from a genetic standpoint, but with a nearly-worldwide lack of nobility and governments by monarchy, they're pretty unnecessary these days, too.
Arranged marriages for the purposes of selective breeding, however, might be something to consider for the future. Although, I'm sure that scientists will just genetically engineer children to be resistant to disease or have higher IQs or automatically be born with antibodies for cancer, polio, the flu or whatever diseases are popular at the time. Instead of genetic engineering with the looming risk of mutation and abnormality and mental instability, marriages could be arranged, or at least pregnancies, so that certain genetic traits could be crossed and linked over several generations and eventually, everyone would start being born with higher IQs and desirable traits without anyone havig to manipulate genetic codes.
Oops. I got way off topic there. Sorry.
Mentally, I believe a person is an adult when they are capable of responsibly planning their actions. When a person is able to determine the consequences of his or her actions before they do them, then they are adults.
That does not mean that people that make mistakes or commit errors of judgment are not adults. That just means they lack a bit of common sense or are willing to overlook certain risks at their own expense.
Case in point: My wife and I were not planning to have a baby and were not really ready for one financially or in a career sense. However, we got pregnant even though we knew the risks. That doesn't mean we didn't understand the consequences that were possible if we had unprotected sex. We just did it depite the risks.
Not that I'm complaining. I wouldn't give up my daughter for anything in the world.
