This is a discussion split from the thread "Does God Exist?" Somehow we wandered off the subject, so I'm putting it in a new thread. It should be in the political discussion thread, but that thread appears to be in Mod limbo right now being cleaned up or something. This can be easily merged into it when it's returned.
Anyway, on with it (click the convenient quote link for a little more context)...
But it's equal consent, not a matter of coercion.
It's a variety of reasons for which such ages are chosen. The government can set a minimum age for driving because it owns all the roads and can make such decisions for several factors as long as they don't engage in baseless discrimination. The age limit on alcohol and cigarettes is questionable, as at best it serves as sort of an assistance to the parents. Paedophilia laws exist because of the coercion involved.
Which shows pure arbitrary age limits are bad and one needs stronger reasons for such limits. However, this has nothing to do with the quoted portion it was apparently in response to.
Pre-pubescent children don't have that kind of interest in sex. The biology and relevant psychology hasn't yet set into place for it.
Which again gets into a failing of law.
Because people are sheep and have to have someone to tell them how to live or otherwise there will be chaos? Laws are supposed to be there to provide legal recourse for harms effected by less moral people. Laws are useless for telling people how to live, because most people are going to ignore the laws they don't like, anyway. Society isn't something that can be controlled. You can barely even plan structure for it. It's mostly just self-organizing.
Morality is the psychological framework by which one tempers one's actions. Moral people don't sit around wanting to do bad things but having to stop because it's not moral. Morality is a factor of consideration before actions are even chosen. Certain elements of it are objective because of necessity and practicality for social cooperation, and much of that has evolved hardwired in most people. Freedom allows people to act however they want, but only as long as those acts do not extend past you and/or uncoerced, consenting individuals. Morality keeps people from wanting to act in certain ways in the first place.
My posture wasn't relativistic, but a recognition of the limitations of law. There are plenty of things that people can do to themselves that do not harm others, even if it harms them. There are things people can do to themselves that might open them to do things to other people. The law is only useful for dealing with the times when harm is very likely to occur to others. Even so, it has to be adaptable enough to recognize grey area and not infringe upon people's rights in the name of prior restraint.
Anyway, on with it (click the convenient quote link for a little more context)...
Originally posted by Womble
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Hard and fast ot vague and flexible, it is not the point. The question is on what basis and by what authority one decides about whether or not to set an age of consent and at what ages.
No it doesn't. If setting the age of consent on a particular age is a purely arbitrary decision, then there is no reason why one couldn't just as legitimately set the age of consent at any random age from one month to 12 years.
What does puberty have to do with the ability of making informed consent?
Not reall. The ages of achieving puberty vary widely and can occur at the age of 10 and even earlier, and sexual relations with minors are classified as paedophilia irrespective of the minor's puberty levels.
And yet there's no escape from legislating it, because that's the only way societies gain order.
Morality is SUPPOSED to "kill" freedom. What is morality, if not a set of limitations imposed on one's right to freely act on their desires?
It's your relativistic posture in this paragrpaph that it at the height of arrogance. Laws are supposed to exist for the common benefit of the society members. If the society is harmed by people doing stupid things to themselves (which is very often the case; unless you are a hermit in the woods, it is pretty difficult to do something to yourself without it having a wider impact), laws should be, and usually are, enacted to prevent such harm.
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