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Admin
Oh...I'd say we're all paying for it, one way or another ;)
Admin
Give it time.
EDIT:
:hanzo:
Admin
But could you imagine the logistics of a law that says "no sex before age X"? If you catch to underage people having sex, what do you do with them? Are you sure they really understood that they were breaking the law? There needs to be some sort of cutoff anyway so that perverts don't take advantage of young children, but where do you set the cutoff?
Legally speaking, the easiest solution is to use a previously defined age: the age of majority, which happens to be 18 years old. Sure there are some edge cases, but they've been mostly worked out.
Another reason that the age of majority makes sense is that teenagers are still trying to figure out how to live with their hormones. Some adults would love to take advantage of that vulnerability. The current law is just trying to prevent that from happening.
Is the current law the best solution? Maybe not. But we can't expect the law to fix everything. If we tried to fix everything with legislation, we'd have to give up all our rights and live like cattle.
At least in the US, that would depend on a variety of other factors. Most states also factor in age differences, whether there was a preexisting relationship prior to the older partner turning 18, and more. Obviously if the sex was nonconsensual, none of that matters, but your blanket statement isn't as correct as you seem to think.
Admin
How about just: Party: Party: Party: Party: Party: Party: Party: Party:
(use reverse side if more individuals need to be registered)
Just jumping ahead to accommodate the polygamists/Muslims/etc.
Admin
There are plenty of examples of 18ish yo males having sex with <18 yo females that have resulted in them being entered into a sex offender registry.
We even have examples of similar situations involving mere photographs of the young lass resulting in such severe consequences.
Something is terribly amiss.
Admin
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I heard that they fear the nuclear reactors to overreact instead.
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I disagree. People are able to make educated choices about their own sexual life long before reaching the age of majority. Plus, there are a lot of teenage girls with 18-year-old boyfriends out there happily having consensual sex, so we're criminalizing normal human behavior.
It's even worse with photos: In almost every single western country, if an underage girl send a naked photo to her boyfriend, both have committed a crime that could lead to several decades in prison (distribution/posession of child pornography). This in absolutely insane.
Admin
It wasn't meant to be.
Just pointing out how gray this issue really is.
They married at younger ages before.
And again, if they are trying to "figure it out", then it doesn't make sense to let them have sex as long as their partner is close enough in age, either.
Either they can't be trusted to understand sex in order to consent, or they can.
I'm not speaking to my personal moral opinions, I'm speaking to the insanity of the current system.
Admin
But if age difference is what makes it illegal, why aren't we stopping couples that are 20 years apart but both over 20.
Why is it some weird combination of too young and age difference?
I get the emotional reasons, but there are no logical reasons for the current line of thought.
It all appears to be setup so that the most people can have sex balanced against making the least amount of people sick to their stomach about partners. It's all based on emotion.
Admin
Sheez... I had to read this twice to get it right.
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Making a mental note: when saying something offensive, don't forget to mention I'm fat.
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Eighteen year olds are considered adults, and able to be tried as such. That they get punished more harshly than seventeen year olds do is consistent across every part of the law.
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The funniest part in that is (in most jurisdictions I know of) they can fuck somewhat legally for a year until he's 18. Then they have to stop fucking for a year until she's also 18. :wtf:?
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Or they can get married in some states that allows it at their age.
I remember that a number of states has exception that allows married couples to have sex regardless of their age.
Admin
In my part of Europe marriage is allowed if both male and female (as God intended :trollface:) are both over 18 OR one of them is and another is over 16 AND has permissions from their parents. The age of consent is 16 however so it renders the marriage aspect somewhat moot.
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Because you seem to be intentionally obtuse, and in reality this has nothing to do with age difference, but with having enough life experience to not get yourself into trouble. The problematic case is one person being considered a child, and the other an adult. A twenty year old and a sixty year old are both adults, no problem there. A sixteen year old and a twenty year old are one child and one adult.
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Almost every country? Name more than one.
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Which is why it shouldn't try to define what it means :) Let the churches define it in their own special ways...and we'll just issue the tickets to whoever asks.
Wait until you pair a 19 and and 18 year old -- right on a boundary line where one side has the age of consent set to 18 and the other side has the age of consent set to *19*... :PAdmin
All of which would be simple enough, except there are a bunch of other legal implications (e.g., taxes, who's the default next-of-kin for medical reasons, etc.)
Admin
Then it fails on that definition. I don't need to provide examples do I?
We have divorce.
Again, I don't agree with these socially, but if I were to remain consistent politically, I'm having a hard time.
Based on history, that's just subjective. Society has been able to marry 15 year olds in the past. I think it has more to do with the social structure.
Yep. That's what it has come to. If the morality of marriage to different parties is determined by popular opinion, then its better just to remove it from government.
Because, just as easy as homosexual marriage has been granted, it can be taken away.
Society could determine that homosexuality is a choice or a mental disease, years from now, and then it will be taken away because we'll go back to fixing them. They'll be told that they don't have the faculty to make decisions about marriage, just like kids don't, because their brain is not structured correctly.
I don't have this opinion, but those are just secular examples of how homosexual marriage can be restricted in the future.
As long as the power to define marriage belongs to the government, we are all at risk.
Which can all be determined by other logistics legally.
Next-of-kin should mean shit compared to a living will.
Because I can show examples where innercity kids actually have weaker IQ as they age.
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F.U.: wherefore art thou 18y/o
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I never said that it couldn't happen, merely that it doesn't happen by default. Try re-reading my post.
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@trwtfbot expecting the legal system to be sane.
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No, because most jurisdictions make exceptions for pre-existing relationships.
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I believe the intersection of those two is an empty set. But good to know nevertheless. Anyway it's not like it concerns me personally as being a nerd I didn't get any (legally or illegally) when I was underage.
Admin
So? Lots of technical terms are not in common use. It doesn't mean they are not useful.
You are actually supporting my point, though I have to say your definitions are very culturally limited indeed. Many societies had quite different inheritance patterns. In some pre-Bismarck German states, for instance, land was inherited by the youngest son. But...illegitimate (i.e. children not of the marriage) came last if at all. How does that not support my comment that originally marriage defined property and inheritance rights? The fact that women in Western societies couldn't ownproperty until remarkably late doesn't mean that marital status did not define who got to share in that property. A will cannot own property, but try arguing that because of that its primary purpose is not to assign it!
Your either-or is a false dichotomy. I agree that the US sex offender system as interpreted by different States is extremely weird but that doesn't mean that people not intellectually and emotionally capable of giving consent should not be protected. Calendar age is probably not a good guide. In a less guilt-driven and prudish society we'd probably issue sex driving licenses after suitable physical and psychological testing. But I completely disagree about "special powers at 40". A 40 year old pursuing much younger people is a sexual predator, and possibly a dangerous one. My feeling is that the rules on being classed a sex offender do need to be different for people who are still in adolescence - which can continue up to around 22 - but to avoid the mess which currently exists in the US - and the EU, I find - really a consistent set of rules on age of consent is needed which can be explained to all teenagers clearly and unambiguously. And consent needs to be spelled out starting at perhaps pre-teen level.
Admin
Hey, @boomzilla, what exactly is it you don't like about this ruling? I thought you tolerated gays. Is there something specifically bad about this decision, or is it just the latest entry in the list of decisions the scotus has made that you disagree with?
I'm not gonna commit to not trolling you for it (Well, I suppose I could if you really want), but I sincerely am interested to hear your opinion on this.
Admin
That means that you're ok with people under age X having sex.
You might have another qualifying factor that is statistically related to age, and so the straightforward statement could be misleading. But you are in fact not going to say "You're 16, you can't have sex, period".
So there must be someone of a young age that you are ok with having sex.
It's a simple yes or no, even if someone could misunderstand why you said yes or no.
Unless you qualified the 16 year old for understanding the consequences and responsibilities for sex with your "license". At that point you shouldn't get to choose who they have sex with.
I could just as easily say that homosexuals have a mental condition that makes them incapable for having consensual sex. And then we're back to square one.
Ultimately people are going to decide, as a society, what forms of sex are allowed, and those decisions will be purely subjective and emotional.
Therefore, its not impossible for society to shift their morality base and accept sex at a wider age range.
As long as the government is involved, there will be winners and losers.
By far, my biggest concern is that they do realize that age has little to do with it other than being correlated with a person's ability to consent, and that it will change from the spaghetti mess that it is now, to government deciding whether or not a person is capable of consenting to marriage.
Then they'll be saying stuff like. "Sorry, you're too autistic, you can't get married."
The marriage license thing has always been used for control, and never for the benefit of a person's rights. Interracial marriages. Homosexual marriages.
Admin
Regarding polygamy and taxes, in the Dutch systems there are few if any references to marriage in tax and social support laws; it instead bases itself in a concept of 'sharing a household'. This has upsides and downsides, for example your first house has a special tax status, but for a couple that's still only one house.
I'm not sure if/how this works for households of more than 2 adults, but given that polygamy can actually exist (as existing situation for immigrants) as well as children living with their parents excessively long it's probably taken care of.
Admin
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/us/teenagers-jailing-brings-a-call-to-fix-sex-offender-registries.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Another casualty...another anecdote...another data point.
I'm not being antagonistic with you...merely offering a most recent example of something that is truly destructive of young lives.
Claiming "it doesn't happen by default" doesn't seem particularly meaningful. What kind of "default" would we be talking about?
It seems to me that this situation occurs sufficiently often to throw some serious doubt on the 'wisdom' of such harsh sex offender laws.
I'm not advocating a reduction in age-of-consent - to any particular degree - but rather highlighting that there's a real problem-domain to be addressed here.
Admin
Problem one. Anecdotes not accepted around here.
No justice system is - or can be - perfect. There will always be anecdotes of mistakes.
No, based on your anecdote you're :moving_goal_post: from an adult knowingly having sex with a minor to one unknowingly having sex with a minor.
When goals start moving, I leave the conversation. I get enough exercise chasing my kids, TYVM.
Admin
Crossing a border to have sex with someone under the age of consent? That's sex tourism!
Bringing someone under the age of consent across a border to have sex with them? Sex trafficing!
Admin
By that logic, whether it's OK to keep slaves is subjective, because we did it in the past
Juliet was 13 and although Romeo's age is never specified, he's usually assumed to be 16-20Admin
Without an unchanging moral code, yes, it is subjective.
Every generation feels there's is morally superior, and yet, when you look at history, slavery/no-slavery homosexual/no-homosexual repeats in the past.
Unless you believe in an absolute single authority to morality, there is no morality. Morality becomes, whatever best suits society.
And in some contexts, slavery can best suit society.
Please, understand, this doesn't have to be racial slavery.
Consider the following.
You're a tribal culture, you're being attacked by another tribe. You have no jail system. You win the fight. Now you have three choices:
Letting them go is not practical, even if it is the ideal. Therefore, enslaving them could be morally justified.
Then you also have to consider indentured servitude.
Obviously if someone makes the interest so high it can't be paid off, it's no different than slavery.
But, I'm digressing.
The point is that morality is subjective. So "OK" is defined by whatever is best for society.
Admin
Which one is the thing here that's designed to create a commitment intended to last a lifetime?
Admin
It's horrible law. This post sums it up pretty well:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420381/due-process-gay-marriage-gay-marriage-decision
We're continuing to toss our tradition of limited government and rule of law into the garbage heap and that's a really bad thing. But most people just care about a policy outcome and couldn't give a shit about how it came about.
It's a policy that I favor, but it's a travesty of a ruling. Anyone who has ever thought that, for instance, a prosecutor shouldn't be able to use illegally obtained evidence should be horrified about this ruling, because it represents a similar ends justify the means / by any means necessary style of operating.
Admin
There already is. It is nearly impossible to get a 38 states to ratify a constitutional amendment, but the effect of the existing words is routinely modified whenever five or more unelected judges see fit to do so.
Admin
It's probably a mark of how dysfunctional Congress is that people feel it necessary to resort to what is a legal hack (someone had to really work to get exactly the right case to come to the SCOTUS to get the outcome they wanted) in order to get something changed. Why is Congress so bad this way, so utterly against any form of compromise that passing virtually any kind of legislation that might be seen as unacceptable to the most extreme of supporters is automatically beyond the pale?
That said, the 9th Amendment ought to be a clear indication of why there shouldn't be a Federal restriction on who can get married. It's not something that the Feds are explicitly allowed to restrict, therefore they can't restrict it. The 9th is an excellent amendment.
Admin
What are you talking about? Marriage stuff was mostly a state thing.
Bah...this sort of talk makes me angry because it's so stupid. But since you're not American, I'll give you a pass. Again, it reminds me of the people who are convinced that democracy is dead because too many people disagreed with them and voted against their preference.
I blame the Democrats. Look, in GWB's term, he worked with Teddy Freakin' Kennedy! But so long as Harry Reid was in charge of the Senate, shit ground to a halt for stuff that would have been normal in other times. And so stuff ratcheted up on both sides.
The 9th Amendment is so fucking dead. For so goddamned long. But you're right, it was a nice idea.
Admin
Was. Until SCOTUS stepped in and said "all states must do X or you are denying this constitutional (Federal) right (that we just made up)." For several values of X, not just marriage.
Admin
Right, but what I said was in context of @dkf asking about Congress' dysfunctionality.
Admin
Yeah, they have their own ways of making states bow to Federal authority over things that properly belong to the states, like "We can't pass a law about this, so we're asking you to; if you don't, or we don't like the law you pass, we'll cut off your money."
Admin
Yeah, that's a Common behavior of our Core government.<see what I did there?
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According to your own reasoning, all of the laws regarding marriage should operate within the context of the previously agreed meaning of the word "marriage", at the time the legal wording was used.
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I've got it! Every law should include a glossary defining the terms used within the law. That way, there can be no ambiguity about what the law means, and the law can't change meaning just because of linguistic drift. This may also have the side effects of simpler laws and less judicial wrangling about what a law means. Win-win-win!
Admin
Can this be done by reference? Or are you just about to make the law even more turgid?
https://youtu.be/6u8AgUXPpLM?t=5s
Admin
Maybe I'm missing the joke, but they usually do define most of the important terms.