[Vision2020] The age of consent

[Joe Campbell]

What if the daughter IS too young to consent to sex or marriage, Princess? 

Firstly, what if the daughter lacks certain cognitive powers, like the ability to partake in means-to-ends reasoning, because she is too young?

Clearly, consenting to a request is something more than merely acting in accordance with that request. Otherwise, dogs would consent to a great many actions.

Secondly, the whole time you make it seem as if the issue is a moral one when in fact it is really a set of issues in the philosophy of law that matter.

When is society allowed to restrict the actions of others, and for what reasons? Is society ever required to restrict certain actions, and under what conditions?

In answer to the second question, I say that society can restrict behavior in cases of clear harms to clear persons for the purpose of protecting members of the society from harm.

If the issue were a moral issue, then an appeal to the Bible would be worth considering. After all, it has an undeniable role in the history of Western ethics. Another thing is that, as you and I both believe, it is The Truth. This is part of the reason why both of us govern our behavior with respect to this Text.

All is fine so long as we limit our own behavior. But it is unclear how you can justify the actions of some other person merely by appeal to your interpretation of the Text. Why would that reason matter to someone who has some other religious text or to someone who has no text at all? Why would it matter to someone who has a different interpretation of the Text?

Lastly, to even suggest, in the current social climate, that young girls have the power to consent to either sex or marriage is irresponsible, IMHO.

--
Joe Campbell

---- Taro Tanaka <taro_tanaka at hotmail.com> wrote: 

=============
"Consent" is consent to marriage, not to sex outside of marriage. In a 
Christian society, we should not need to set a particular minimum age for 
allowing people to marry, because at least one set of parents always has a 
say in the matter: the parents of the daughter. Not only that, but the 
daughter also has a say in the matter. The parents can veto the marriage, 
but they cannot force their daughter to marry someone that she does not want 
to marry. So, if the daughter thinks she's too young, or that the guy isn't 
Mr. Right, she can say no. Ditto for the girl's father. Because people know 
themselves and their children, and love one another, and are not insane, 
they know when it is a good time to get married. The pastor performing the 
marriage also has considerable say, in that no pastor worth his salt will 
perform a marriage without premarital counseling. So, in a Christian society 
governed by biblical laws, we could eliminate the minimum age laws regarding 
marriage and the resulting problems would be nil.

And just in case it is not clear, biblically speaking there is no "age of 
consent" to sex outside marriage. It doesn' matter if both parties are 35 
and financially independent. Sex outside marriage is verboten. If you want 
to get laid, get hitched.

Clear enough?

-- Princess Sushitushi