BS: Age of consent

Subject: BS: Age of consent
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Nov 17 - 03:34 PM

16
In West Virginia, if a person who is older than 14 has sex with a person aged 11 or under, he or she can be punished by 15 to 35 years in prison. If a person aged 16 or older has sex with someone under 16, and is more than 4 years older than the victim, the offender could face 1 to 5 years in prison. Mar 23, 2015

What is the fucking age of consent for Republicans ?

In biblical times a life span was much shorter so is Roy OK?
Mary and Joseph had sex until a council changed the bible over a thousand years ago. Now there is talk Mary was 14. Joseph never venerated, now we know why?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/11/10/critics-slam-roy-moores-disgusting-fundraiser-based-sexual-abuse-allegations

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Nov 17 - 03:40 PM

18
India's age of consent for sex is 18 under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013. In 1892, the marital rape and subsequent death of a 10-year-old girl, Phulmoni Dasi, caused the age of consent to be raised from 10 to 12.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 09:22 AM

Mary could have been even younger when she conceived(as was Shakespeare's Juliet in that story), but the gospel states that they had no sexual intercourse until after the birth of Jesus.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 09:26 AM

Uh Hunh. So?

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 09:40 AM

So basically, God took advantage of an underage girl and got her pregnant...
Thus setting a precedent for abusive church officials for many centuries to follow..

The pervy old creep needs reporting to the law... 😇

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Raggytash
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 10:04 AM

Yippeee, time for fairy stories again eh professor.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 10:23 AM

Roy Moore Is God!

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 10:24 AM

( or vice versa)

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 10:47 AM

Age of consent is obviously cultural and has changed over the millennia. There are very good reasons for it being raised in 'modern' societies, but it is still arbitrary demanding on locale and culture.

When it is defined by law, all parties would do well to know that law and act accordingly--- but we all know that temptation and hormones affect behavior. In some ways, it's like jaywalking laws.... everyone knows they will be disregarded at times, but they are there to establish 'blame' when something goes wrong. Jaywalking in busy downtown traffic IS a problem... and non-consensual OR consensual intimacies with anyone under legal age must be defined, controlled and/or punished when circumstances warrant.

Roy Moore... and many others... knew they were 'legally' wrong, and counted on just not being caught/reported.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 11:33 AM

So basically, God took advantage of an underage girl and got her pregnant...

It would have been an appalling situation for an unmarried girl of that age at that time.
Girls were stoned to death for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 12:01 PM

Well.. those potential consequences makes God's callous use of the girl even more appalling...

He really does seem a nasty piece of work...

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 12:09 PM

Girls were stoned to death for it. <.I>

So why wasn't "God" stoned to death for it, Professor?

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: robomatic
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 03:22 PM

1) There was recently a very public case in France where a 28 year old man had 'consensual sex with an 11 year old girl.

2) Mohammed's youngest wife married (or betrothed to) him when she was in single digits in age.

3) I remember an interesting hike with an American of Irish descent who claimed that Irish girls 'matured' at a later age than most others. He was an interesting intelligent, and fast hiker and I didn't catch my breath enough to ask him how he knew that or what it betokened among Irish ethnicity.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: robomatic
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 04:05 PM

A story I find touching of an American anthropologist among the Yanomami, betrothed to a young woman and eventually having a child with her. "More things in heaven and earth, Horatio"

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 04:10 PM

We are not living in Biblical times. We are living in times when childhood has been extended. In that culture, little boys and little girls get to practice-flirt with SAFE ADULTS who do not take advantage of them. They get to try in THEIR OWN sexuality, not have it materially damaged by an unsafe adult response.

This idea that girls of that age are so tempting is deeply intertwined and involved with the myth that women's sexuality is dangerous and sinful-- a key foundation for white heteropatriarchy, toxic masculinity, and rape culture.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 05:13 PM

Well said, wysiwyg. Your post is the first one in this thread that has not made me feel uncomfortable. That's my visceral reaction, not an intellectual one. Cheers.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 08:40 PM

Thanks, Steve; I heard that long ago on a good program about dads and daughters.

The further (icky) piece is that when that type of practice-flirting crosses over into the child touching or caressing provicatively, it's usually a suire sign of having been molested earlier-- not an invitaiton to have 'fun.' They're re-enacting what was done to them in an effort to get some help about it, not to repeat it.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 08:45 PM

And further, whenever two people of like age and experience freely and playfully experiment, that's one thing. There is no "age of consent" in that dynamic. It's just healthy body exloration, unless one has been interfered with, and acts that our upon the other.

It's another thing when there is an age/experience difference AND a power dynamic.

Please, men, just Google Rape Culture and educate yourselves like the good allies I know you wish to be. ('Age of consent' just implies, "How young a girl is it all right to f*** with?")

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 09:26 PM

We are not sensitive enough to the signs and signals, for sure. I do think that there are probably enough men around who just know what's right, and by that I don't just mean men who have been valiant enough to fight and win against their basest instincts. Believe it or not, we're not all caveman rapists (I know you don't think that). As a dad of both a boy and a girl, my instinct has always been protective, and, by extension, as a teacher in a secondary school my instinct was to be vigilant and protective, without being obsessive, and without wanting it to show, towards the children in my pastoral care. It involved a lot more than just keeping a weather eye open, but that's probably a whole nother subject. I think that relationships education is by far the most important role of the school, and I think that it's a bloody disaster. Discuss!

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: meself
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 10:20 PM

Thing is, with this thread, it's unclear what's actually up for discussion. Yeah, I know, 'age of consent' - but what about it? In lieu of any proposition - "Be it resolved that ... " - people are just going to express random thoughts - or announce moral positions. Until someone says something contentious or provocative, and then maybe we get an argument. But so far that hasn't quite happened, so ... ?

(I came here for an argument - this isn't an argument!)

My point is: what's the point?

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Nov 17 - 11:26 PM

I had close family living not too far from Gary Glitter's early 1980s West Country party house...

His activities were an open secret and generally laughed off as harmless fun by envious local blokes
"that lucky rich show off pop star bastard - all that jailbait throwing themselves at him.."

My 15 year old cousin at the local Comprehensive school had friends & class mates who were very flattered to be invited to his parties..

When he was eventually arrested, folks still thought it was a bit of a joke, until they heard rumours of abuse against toddlers and babies..

Not too many years previous in the mid 70s, a 13 year old cousin became engaged to her 21 year old boyfriend..
"He's alright, he's got a job, a suit, a car, and pays for a round.."

If I recall, my early teenage band might have played at their engagement party...???

..and a distant elderly Uncle who was considered the "Dirty Old Man" of his village, leering after, and allegedly touching up young girls, He was regarded as just a harmless joke - a village character...

That was a reality of semi rural West Country culture seemingly accepted as 'normal' back only a generation ago...

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 04:04 AM

Girls were stoned to death for it. <.I>
So why wasn't "God" stoned to death for it, Professor?

Well.. those potential consequences makes God's callous use of the girl even more appalling...

I agree. In the story as it is told the child Mary was too young to give consent and was a victim by our standards.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 07:08 AM

Of course in biblical Palestine the consent of a girl child would have been an alien concept. Joseph was probably considerably older and her consent to the marriage would have been irrelevant with or without divine intervention.

I read that underage marriage is still an issue in USA.
" Nevertheless, the data show that 3,481 children were married in New Jersey between 1995 and 2012. Most were age 16 or 17 and married with parental consent, but 163 were between ages 13 and 15, meaning a judge approved their marriages.
Shockingly, 91 percent of the children were married to adults, often at ages or with age differences that could have triggered statutory-rape charges, not a marriage license."
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/opinion/americas-child-marriage-problem.html

We would not countenance such things in UK.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 08:15 AM

If you are too young to know how to say no, yeah, you are under the age of consent. Been there.

The underage *marriage* thing is separate, and seems to occur more within a religion than otherwise.

The UK don't usually countenance religion trumping actual legality, do they?

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 08:50 AM

Perhaps not the UK, but across the pond we've got Judge Roy Moore and thousands (millions?) more "Christians"[sic] like him.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 08:57 AM

Am I the only one here who fails to see what a mythological yarn about a virgin being impregnated by a supernatural deity has to do with this?

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 09:18 AM

..well it might be set at the foundation of a belief system that allegedly turns a blind eye
to middle aged and older male pillars of society fiddling with little girls...?????

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 11:09 AM

Steve, it was referred to in the OP so it is part of the debate.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: meself
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 11:18 AM

What is the debate?

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 11:25 AM

"What is the debate?"

open for contributions.. not closed... yet......

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 11:29 AM

There are "discussions" that are not debates. Some folks here can't conceive of the possibility.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 11:37 AM

Society dictates "age of consent" based on mores of the time. These change. Sometimes, it's a matter of what's popular, sometimes it's what's right, and people generally don't always know the difference. 10 years old, in my mind, could never be right. Pedophilia, no matter how you frame it. 15 years old: depends on time, place, and situation.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: meself
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 11:45 AM

So - this is a 'discussion'? Okay. It looks to me a series of, mostly, non-sequitur-ial statements. Anyway: have fun with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 12:15 PM

I don't know WHAT it is. Just saying sometimes the BS section seems like Monty Python's "Argument Clinic". Odd that you should call statements related to the same subject "non-sequitur-ial".

Last meta complaints from me. That seems to happen right before threads go tits up.

On topic.
I sometimes interviewed patients with sexually transmitted diseases, and did contact finding. It was complicated, because if the patient was under the age of consent, or the partner they named was, we were obliged to report it. It wasn't easy, as the one time I had to do that, it was an active duty guy and a 13 year old girl, who looked, and acted, like she were much older. The OSI* guy I talked to about it said it didn't matter. That it showed she had low self esteem and needed some help. I didn't think age was much of a factor, but it was, with regard to legality.

There's common sense, and then there's legality. With luck, they're the same, but laws exist because some folks don't understand, or honor, common sense. Laws are because of stupid people and assholes. My opinion.

*OSI: Office of Special Investigation. It's the Air Force's NCIS

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 12:25 PM

Interesting that Michelangelo's Pieta (I'm scared of trying to put accents on letters in Mudcat posts!) shows the dead body of Jesus draped across the lap of a Mary who looks even younger than him, as opposed to the middle-aged woman that might have been expected. In addition, the body of Jesus shows little sign of his suffering. Michelangelo's aim seemed to have been to depict beauty rather than death. He's said to have claimed that a chaste Mary, unaffected by typical sexual desire, would have maintained her youthful beauty. Another explanation could be that, paradoxically, Mary might have been depicted, as the rest of us are supposed to be, as a child of Christ, in spite of her being the woman who bore him. Intriguing. I saw the sculpture in 1968, when we good Catholic schoolboys were able to file slowly past and kiss the outstretched foot of Jesus. A few years later, a lunatic attacked the statue with a hammer. since its restoration it's been kept behind bullet-proof glass.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 12:28 PM

Off-topic again. Damn.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 12:44 PM

An interesting story was told me by a couple who, at age 50, had been married 35 years. Seems they had been boy/girlfriend since elementary school and always said they would be married one day. In the course of time, the girl's mother died, leaving her father to raise the child. Then when she had just turned 15, he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer.
The children's parents got together and told them that if they really wanted to get married, the parents would help. They did, and so they did. They had their first child before their 16th birthdays, and when I knew them they seemed to be a very tight couple. Their first-born son seemed to be the same age as they.

(You led the way, Steve S!)

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Nov 17 - 02:50 PM

Times have changed. . .

Let us go back in time to those wonderful English entertainers, Flanders and Swan:

"Oh, it's hard to say...
Flanders:         "Oly-ma-kitty-luca-chi-chi-chi"
Both:         But in Tonga, that means... "No"!
        
        If I ever have the money,
        'Tis to Tonga I shall go.
        For each lovely Tongan maiden there,
        Will gladly make a date.
        
        And by the time she's said:
Flanders:         "Oly-ma-kitty-luca-chi-chi-chi",
Both:         It is usually too late!

To which Flanders adds, on the live recording, "I don't think so, really."

And I'm pretty sure this web-site has had its way with Madeira, M'Dear

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Thompson
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 11:30 AM

Our ancestors did lots of nasty things. Doesn't justify our doing them too.

Girls having babies when they're young teenagers is usually very bad for their bodies.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 11:36 AM

Ain't all that great for the babies either.

Subject: RE: BS: Age of consent
From: Iains
Date: 15 Nov 17 - 01:13 PM

An unusual situation developing in France.


http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/child-sex-rape-french-set-age-consent-51146035