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Originally Posted by laylo
To believe he should go to jail means you believe that anyone who sleeps with any 15-year-old should go to jail, which would take out a pretty huge chunk of the teen population. Throughout human history 15-year-olds have always had sex and they always will; exceptional contexts of our current society have made it suddenly immoral.
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That's attributed to the "protect the children" movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. It started off as a moral movement and then became political and state-monitored.
If we were looking way back in the history of THIS country (since we're not taking an across-continent approach) we'd find that children were once considered little adults who could do, and be treated as, people twice their age.
What's the middle ground? Should society advocate children having sex or not and should age dynamics matter? If we do advocate it and age doesn't matter, should they then be able to drive, drink, and do other stuff that requires a level of reasoning. Then we have to wonder if the gov't should legislate this type of stuff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by laylo
I personally advocate abstinence, so I would appeal to 15-year-olds themselves to make that decision, not for the criminal justice system to waste its resources locking up their classmate partners.
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I agree with you here. But society has safety cushions for everything else. We could go around speaking against drunk driving but without the legislation people would be more able to do whatever the hell they choose. Morality and legality.