Originally posted by
[email protected] 13 2005, 01:20 PM
I agree that there are allot of 15 year olds who might be unintelligent, emotionally and physically immature but there are 30 year olds like that also.
That's fatuous.
But it's true, regardless of how fatuous you think it is.
The teenage brain and body is just beginning to develop at 15
The teenage brain is starting to develop much younger than that and the social conditions and environment they find themselves in determines massively how they are and what they become.
What and importantly how you teach your child to respond to the world around them will have different effects on a child. Your argument assumes that all 15 year olds are the same and that their rate of growth and abilities to understand the world around them are absolute in every instance.
To unequivocally assert that people as young as 15 or younger have absolutely no chance, ever, to become sexually mature is absurd. And if you do think that, prove it!
for some this may move quicker, but that doesn't mean that they are adults yet.
Why?
In any case, for the law to work, it must be deal in the "general" - in this case it's "generally" true that teenagers are emotionally and physically underdeveloped,
And I think that the major cause of this is because adults physically, emotionally and intellectually suppress independent growth; not because they are necessarily incapable.
as such, unable to actually consent to sexual interaction - particularly with an adult.
I agree, in the present society that is true, but I don't believe it is absolute.
I reject the sexual age of consent and think that we can be rational enough to use our common sense in determining what is and what isn't appropriate.
Who's "we"? If a 40 year old man and a 9 year old together "determine" that sexual interaction between them is "appropriate", that is alright is it?
The difference between a 9 year old and a 15 year old being able to consent or determine what is and what isn't appropriate is wholly disproportionate.
A 9 year old doesn't even have the ability to conceptualise what sex is and I doubt that they ever will be. That does not mean that someone who is 15 or 14 cannot.
The law judges an adult based on how many years someone has been alive, but that isn't what determines an adult.
No, I'm afraid it is, Joe.
Then how do you explain the countless amount of unintelligent, emotionally immature adults?
The distinction between childhood and adulthood is a physiological one.
But there are many young people who are physically more mature than adults? I was 6ft at the age of 14.
We call children children and adults adult not because we think they can not "properly perceive", but because their brains are diffirent. That is why mentally retarded "grown ups" are not adults.
You are effectively saying that because someone's brain has not been "alive" for longer than someone else's that constitutes them as inferior? Which is patently not true. There are scores of 15 year olds and younger who are infinitely more intelligent that 40 year olds.
Mentally "retarded" people have actual physical problems so you can't compare a 15 year old to someone who is mentally ill.
The law justifies itself by saying that 16 year olds are capable enough of making rational decisions about sex, but 15 year olds aren't?
Yes. In this case you have to draw the line somewhere.
So why does that line have to be something so arbitrary as the amount of years you've existed?
Just having someone saying "I consent" is not taking responsibility, which is what we, want people to do, is it not?
Sure, fine, but the problem is not everyone does - that's where laws or rules come in
We don't need "laws" to determine what is and what isn't appropriate.
We don't know whether or not people as young as 12 can emotionally or physically consent to sex.
Mystical bullshit. Of course we know, and the answer is no.
Can you provide me with some evidence please, because I have never seen any? You cannot make an absolute rule for every single human being that is ever going to be created.
You simply cannot say with confidence, and support it with fact, that every 12 year old is or will be the same and that they can never be mature enough to make rational decisions.