Richard Dawkins defends “mild pedophilia,” says it does not cause “lasting harm”

by chrisuk 320 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

  • Simon
    Simon

    I don't make up your rights, but rights you have. There are also rights you don't have whiuch I reminded you of.Take your agenda elsewhere.

  • Demokan
    Demokan

    You called me a child, so I responded: I'm 15. Common sense Simon. And I'll be sixteen in august :)

  • Demokan
    Demokan

    My body, my rights you dissolutioned man. Don't shove your boxed in societal dogmas on me.

  • Simon
    Simon

    Happy birthday Demokan! You should insist on a DQ ice-cream cake.

  • Demokan
    Demokan

    Your getting a little off topic here, now, just saying, thanks for the sarcasm, but it doesn't make you any smarter. And yes I'm planning to celebrate my birthday for the first rime :))

  • Simon
    Simon

    Wait, you claim to be a child so I called you a child then you get annoyed at being called a child and remind me you're a child .... WTF?

    I think you are a fraud or need to find some place else to hang out.

    Chuckey Cheese gives you prizes if you collect enough tickets. They also have pizza and pop. You'll love it there.

  • Demokan
    Demokan

    Um, pedophilia applies to below 18. And even though I'm a teen the child abuse "rules" still apply to me, so I'm not an "immature child" I'm a teen wondering why 15 yr Olds to 17 get lumped in with the 14 below, when I and others my age are perfectly capable of making decisions, I have already left the cult at 15 whereas you took way longer, doesn't that mean that I at least have SOME kind of rational reasoning despite not being 18+? I find it stupid, it's my body.

    Oh and when you called me a child, you were being cynical of course I'd retort, stop with the dq jokes, they don't make you seem smart, just desperate to be right. Oh, and I don't need to have my identity validated by the likes of you to feel good about myself, believe what you want, but your responses seem childish and immature to me.

    Chucky cheese? LOL, I pity you, so that's how you talk to people who disagree with your viewpoints. You've been here since 2000, one would have thunk you would learn by now.

  • Simon
    Simon

    So you're clear now why your comments were inappropriate? Finally!

  • frankiespeakin
    frankiespeakin

    I do think Demokan brings up a very valid subject clearly linked to Dawkin's experience. But it is a very slippery one when it comes to the "age of consent" and legal issues that vary from country to country, and culture and highly charged with emotion.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent

    The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts, and is thus the minimum age of a person with whom another person is legally permitted to engage in sexual activity. The distinguishing aspect of the age of consent laws is that the person below the minimum age is regarded as the victim, and their sex partner as the offender.

    The term age of consent rarely actually appears in legal statutes; [1] it has sometimes been used with other meanings, such as the age at which a person becomes competent to consent to marriage, [2] but the meaning given above is the one now generally understood. It should not be confused with the age of majority, age of criminal responsibility, the voting age, the drinking age, driving age, etc.

    Age of consent laws vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, [1] though most jurisdictions set the age of consent in the range 14 to 18. The laws may also vary by the type of sexual act, the gender of the actors, or other restrictions such as abuse of a position of trust. Some jurisdictions may also make allowances for minors engaged in sexual acts with each other, rather than a single age. Charges resulting from a breach of these laws may range from a misdemeanor such as corruption of a minor, to what is popularly called statutory rape (which is considered equivalent to rape, both in severity and sentencing).

    There are many "gray areas" in this area of law, some regarding unspecific and untried legislation, others brought about by debates regarding changing societal attitudes, and others due to conflicts between federal and state laws. These factors all make age of consent an often confusing subject, and a topic of highly charged debates. [1]

    ......

    Modern laws [ edit ]

    A general great shift in social and legal attitudes toward issues of sex took place in the modern era and beliefs on the appropriate age below which girls should not be permitted to engage in sexual activity drifted toward adulthood. While ages from 10 to 13 were typically regarded as acceptable ages for sexual consent in Western countries during the mid-19th century, [1] by the end of the 19th century changing attitudes towards sexuality and childhood resulted in the raising of the age of consent to around 16. [4]

    Several articles written by investigative journalist William Thomas Stead in the late 19th century on the issue of child prostitution in London led to public outrage and ultimately to the raising of the age of consent to 16.

    The English common law had traditionally set the age of consent within the range of 10 to 12, but in 1875 the age was raised to 13. After intense sensational media revelations about the scourge of under-age prostitution in London in the 1880s caused respectable middle-class outrage, the age of consent was raised to 16 in 1885. Early feminists of the Social Purity movement such as Josephine Butler and others, instrumental in securing the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, began to turn towards the problem of child prostitution by the end of the 1870s.

    The investigative journalist William Thomas Stead of the Pall Mall Gazette was pivotal in exposing the problem of child prostitution in the London underworld through a publicity stunt. In 1885 he "purchased" one victim, Eliza Armstrong the 13-year-old daughter of a chimney sweep, for £5 and took her to a brothel where she was drugged. He then published a series of four exposés entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, which shocked its readers with tales of child prostitution and the abduction, procurement and sale of young English virgins to Continental "pleasure palaces". The "Maiden Tribute" was an instant hit with the public. Victorian society was thrown into an uproar about prostitution. Fearing riots on a national scale, the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt pleaded in vain with Stead to cease publication of the articles. A wide variety of reform groups held protest meetings and marched together to Hyde Park demanding that the age of consent be raised. The government was forced to pass the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 that raised the age of consent to 16 and clamped down on prostitution. [5]

    In the United States, as late as the 1880s most States set the minimum age at 10–12, (in Delaware it was 7 in 1895). [6] Inspired by the "Maiden Tribute" female reformers in the US initiated their own campaign [7] which petitioned legislators to raise the legal minimum age to at least 16, with the ultimate goal to raise the age to 18. The campaign was successful, with almost all states raising the minimum age to 16–18 years by 1920. [4] [8]

    In France, Portugal, Spain, Denmark and the Swiss cantons and other countries, the minimum age was raised to between 13 and 16 years in the following decades. [4] Though the original arguments for raising the age of consent was based on morality, since then the raison d'être of the laws has changed to child welfare and a so-called right to childhood or innocence. [9]

    In France, under the Napoleonic Code the age of consent was set in 1832 at 11, [10] and was raised to 13 in 1863. [11] It was increased to 15 in 1945. [12]

    In the 21st century, several Western countries have raised their ages of consent recently. These include Canada (in 2008 - from 14 to 16); and in Europe, Iceland (in 2007 - from 14 to 15), Lithuania (in 2010 - from 14 to 16), and Croatia (in 2013 - from 14 to 15).

    The 21st century also saw concerns about child sex tourism and commercial sexual exploitation of children, which have led in recent years to several international instruments regarding child sexual abuse, such as the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (Lanzarote, 25 October 2007), and theEuropean Union's Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. [13]

    The Law determines who the victim and who is the offender. This can make a person act like a victim when clearly they are not, this is a conundrum we are faced with,, with no absolute moral authority to make a correct answer. Now who is hurt more by this arbritrary age of consent? I think we make automatic victims of people who arn't victims and sometimes unneccesarily cause more damage by being so arbritrary.

  • LisaRose
    LisaRose

    Wouldn't it be nice to be fifteen again and have all the answers? *sigh*

    Wait, then I would have to be thirty again and realize I was completely wrong about everything I thought I knew when I was 15.

    Then I would have to be 40 again and learn from my children that I had the IQ of an eggplant.

    Never mind.

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