Dutch perverts go too far.... - Page 3

Compared to when I was a kid, girls now seem much "older" at a particular age then they did. Not only are they exposed to more fashion, makeup, jewelry, etc, but puberty is earlier now.

Why might that be?

For one thing, you go through puberty earlier if you are heavier, and we are getting heavier. Stress also can contribute to early puberty, as can early exposure to sexual imagery.

Also, there is a theory about hormone laced shampoos:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2119

The foundation of the Substantive Due Process of the Lawrence case is a simple extension of the right to privacy -- consenting adults have reasonable expectation to privacy in sexual quarters. That is all. A pedophile has no expected right to privacy because their other partner (below some legally defined age) cannot socially and in most cases developmentally consent to a sexual act. While this prohibition of sex between a legal consenter and a non-consenter may be worn down by challenges, I believe that the damage done to someone who has not intellectually developed to fully consent to sexual acts has been proven definitively by numerous peer reviewed studies making this process a fight against facts.

How many examples have you lined up? You didn't even state an specific examples, and I can only be left to guess you're referring to scattered state-by-state issues and court cases about teens getting abortions or the like. In a mostly anecdotal argument of comparing general impressions, I'd say my one clear and specific nation-wide example is a good match for your complete lack of specific examples.

Note, I wasn't talking about average age of first marriage, just what was permissible. I'm saying that from what I vaguely remember about life in rural America, pre-Civil war, teenage marriages weren't so uncommon as to be shocking. According to this web page, "As late as 1930, twelve states allowed boys as young as 14 and girls as young as 12 to marry (with parental consent)".

I'm taking a broad view of centuries, not the ups and downs of recent decades, wherein you can find trends in both directions concerning status, responsibilities, rights, and privileges vs. age.

Yes. For me it all comes down to what the impact of sexual activity would be, the interplay of consent, understanding, psychological and physical consequences, social setting, the ability to take responsibility, etc., which makes the age line for consent something less than a clear, bright, or fixed line. Age itself isn't the issue, although it's clearly an important factor in whether consequences of sexual activity are good or bad, and it's in those consequences where the moral issue lies for me, not in the cultural taboo surrounding the issue.

From http://www.positivepress.com/perspec...96-08-04.php3:

Of course, high infant mortality rates can skew these figures, but high infant mortality rates also mean that females need to start pumping out babies as soon as physically possible to help maintain or grow a human population.

Nick, you should know that you don't advocate for something. You advocate something. I'm sorry to point this out, and if you weren't a teacher, I wouldn't bother. But I really don't want our kids to learn incorrectly at school, as I've seen the effects quite clearly in Hong Kong.

Can 12 year-olds perform abortions? Then 12 year-olds cannot consent to their own abortion.

I am thinking the ability of minors to obtain abortions (contrary to other medical procedures) and/or birth-control without parental consent.


We aren't exactly talking about marriage in this case. We're talking about consent of sexual activity. I don't have any particular hearburn over marriage at a younger age being permissible (given appropriate parental involvement at appropriate ages).


I am thinking more about recent trends.

I do believe there is an increasing sexualization of our youth at younger and younger agesculturally these days...with the law lending its support.

In the legal arena, I mainly see an attempt to balance the rights of parents to know and control what goes on in their children's lives with the fact that kids will often make incredibly bad decisions in a desperate effort to avoid parental involvement which they fear, and a realization that sometimes that fear is well justified, because not all parents will react in helpful ways when they are responding with the kind of anger the touchy area of sexuality often creates.

In the commercial arena, however, yes, I agree with that. It's very lucrative to get kids hooked into the shallow values of teenage sexuality at earlier and earlier ages, it's very profitable to create kids who are worried about looking "sexy", and who express that worry in demands for expensive fashions and particular brand names, all in complete disregard for what a shitty value system this establishes at an early age.

The abortion is simply trying to undo the initial wrong.

The troubling thing here is the underlying assumption that most parents (vs. a very small minority) will not respond helpfully to their kids.

Almost all parents are irrational and unhelpful when their first child (at least) becomes sexually active.

When my oldest daughter was 13 or so, we had a bunch of dance parties at our house - during one of the parties, a bunch of the kids ended up sneaking off and playing truth or dare. The parent meeting at school after that was a nightmare - parents screaming at us, etc, and there was no sex, just a kiss or two. Parents are often useless twits when it comes to the budding sexuality of their children.

The troubling thing here is the underlying assumption that most parents (vs. a very small minority) will not respond helpfully to their kids.

In my experience, not only is it most parents, it is almost all parents. They go frickin' crazy.

It doesn't end at the first child...

Perhaps the solution is to work with parents to help them respond reasonably and rationally rather than simply doing an end-run around them by letting their kids get contraception and abortions without their knowledge or consent?

Why are we always so content with treating symptoms rather than root causes in our culture? Probably because it is easier...requires less work and effort.

Would you as a parent ever let your daughter have an abortion?

No.

So if your daughter wanted to reason with you and discuss these things openly, that would be impossible because you are beyond reasoning, and thus are unreasonable.

QED

Of course not. Don't be ridiculous. But some things are not really negotiable. Wouldn't you agree?

P.S. Of special note is the fact that with the "end-run" approach, there is no opportunity at all for discussion, reasonable or otherwise. It has been eliminated.

First of all, I tend to agree with e# about how a lot of parents react to these things, but even if you disagree on that count, that's only half the issue.

Let's suppose that 99.9% of parents are wonderful parents who will do the right, supportive thing if their kids tell them that they've contracted deadly sexual disease X, and help them get treatment -- without screaming fits that wake the neighbors, without physical violence breaking out, without creating a nasty rift in the parent/child relationship.

Even if that fantasy world were true, kids don't believe it. A lot of kids, irrational beings that they are, would wait until it was too late to save themselves, and maybe spread the disease to others in the meantime, rather than face their parents about it. If kids know that any attempt to seek treatment on their own will end up getting reported to their parents, many simply will not seek treatment.

Now, if you believe the appropriate penalty for having sex as a teen and not confessing to your parents is death, I suppose that all works out fine.

When we give children, via laws or via court decisions, the right to seek medical treatment, abortions, and birth control, etc., on their own, it's hardly a matter of treating them like adults and recognizing in these children the responsibility to make adult decisions. On the contrary, it's just a way to try to mitigate the consequences of bad decisions making and fear of parental reactions, justified though those fears may be or not.

Why are we always so content with treating symptoms rather than root causes in our culture?

Wrong.

There are two answers to these points.

One of which has something to do with parents accepting that their children have control of their destiny, that if they believe their children to be capable of choosing to have sex and taking responsibility for that act, then they must by necessity believe their children capable of choosing to have an abortion and taking responsibility for that act. You cannot have it both ways, once a young girl becomes pregnant she doesn't forgo her previous responsibilities and self-directed actions...

The second has to do with the fact that every thing is negotiable. I find it hard to believe that if your daughter's life was a risk due to a pregnancy you would seriously consider advising her to get an abortion. When a decision has to be made, there is almost always room for discussion...

Which is why proponents of non-abstinence only sex education have been yelling at the rafters...

In what way is it wrong? Or am I supposed to read your mind?

Are you going to tell us? So what is the root cause? That we humans are sexual beings? Or that parents can't deal with the fact that their "baby sons" and "baby daughters" will become sexual beings...before the age of 30.

fact: I remember that Clinton's Secretary of Health (can't think of her name) advocated to teach masturbation in sex ed. She was completely destroyed. The same people who believe in Jesus the son of a minor, were outraged about the mere thought of this. Yet it would be an all natural way to prevent many teen pregnancies if kids would be properly educated and not left on their own devices.

fact: Parents, as research shows, loose 40% of their ability to reason during the first 10 years of their childs life and a parents IQ is diminished by about 20 points (scientific american). This has an evolutionary purpose.

You mean like that we aren't all totally commited to Biblical law?

It is treating them like adults and giving them adult decisions to make.

That makes no sense whatsoever.

Um, not to nit pick, but if you going to use the word "fact".....

You're thinking of Joycelyn Elders, the Surgeon General under Bill Clinton.

BTW, Donna Shalala was Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Ummm...no...I mean: Why are we always so content with treating symptoms rather than root causes in our culture?

And we circle back to the taking responsibility part.


Everything?


Ah...the old "life of mother" card.

You guys are priceless.

They're not the same concepts, but as far as I know they're not different in terms of their legal status: Currently, parental notification laws are legal, and so are parental consent laws, as long as there's a route for an exception to be approved by some legal process.
You can think that, but some evidence would be nice. According to that link I provided, there aren't any laws requiring parental notification or consent for other similar medical procedures or counseling. Abortion is singled out by pro-lifers opposed to abortion, as a way of limiting abortion, not out of a general concern about parental consent.

According to that link, many of them did relate to that - like contraceptive services and adoption - but there is also no consent required for mental health or substance abuse counseling. Basically, any case where it might be a sensitive issue between parents and adults. Getting stitches due to a fall in the playground isn't likely to be such an issue, so schools require permission slips from parents. But even there, I wonder if those are actual laws, like we have for abortion, or if they're just the policies of individual schools and hospitals trying to protect themselves against lawsuits.

Tell me it's not true...

Just because both are legal doesn't make them the same thing.


Hard to find anything that isn't applying specifically to abortion (I don't read that as evidence that this is the only issue where consent is a question...only that it is the most talked about thing...if my kid is going in for an appendectomy...no one is likely to raise a quibble over informing me and getting my consent), however:

Tell you what...I'll give you rape, incest and life of mother...and you give me the other 95% of the abortions. Then we're settled.

P.S. And everything is negotiable?