Delta4Embassy
Gold Member
I agree with having sexual age of consent laws. I vehemently disagree with them based on the usual reasons cited. It has nothing to do with protecting children from sexual exploitation by adults. We exploit children in a myriad of ways including in acting/entertainment, advertizing, politics, etc. We have no problem exploiting children.
It isn't even about imposing an anti-sex religion onto everyone as I once thought. It's much simpler. The real reason for sexual age of consent laws is: population control.
If we allowed everyone who wanted to have sex, to have sex (from puberty onwards when the body becomes sexually mature and starts to produce sex hormones resulting in a desire for sex,) population problems we have already would only be multiplied many times. China and India used to have little if any population control and a very 'make as many children as you can' mentality. The result was well over a billion people for each country and depletion of finite resources resulting in widespread famines.
Some US states even mention reproduction in the texts of their legal statutes as in California's,
"WHY SO MUCH ATTENTION TO STATUTORY RAPE?
California has the highest teen birth rate in the U.S.
Every 8 minutes, a teenager in California has a baby.
3 of 4 births to High School girls are fathered by adults.
Men over 25 account for twice as many teen births as boys under 18 years old.
The Average Age difference between the teen victim and the adult defendant in cases filed by the District
Attorney is 7years 9months.
Men over 20 are responsible for 5 times as many births among junior high school girls.
In California almost 70% of teen births are fathered by adult men. "
So California's AoC has been 18 for quite some time. Babies cost states and countries money and resources whether people are married or not. And a pregnant teenager suually drops of school, goes on welfare, and never really becomes as productive in society as those that don't drop out.
One could say then the reasons for AoC laws is entirely selfish and money-based which is true, but in the big picture it's much more than that.
The world's grossly overpopulated as-is. If everybody was allowed to have sex from about 13 onwards, problems tied to overpopulation like climate change (industry to sustain those people, homes for them to live in, jobs, water, electricty production, etc. all have to go up when the population does until resources are depleted.)
So governments have a national as well as international/blobal interest in keeping runaway population growth in check. Claiming then that AoC laws are about protecting children is simply a political lie since encouraging birth control and abortions is usually a win-lose political notion. But saying you're "protecting children from pedophiles" is a win-win.
Sex isn't anything anyone needs to be protected from, and virtually every adult eventually desires. What about diseases? What about 'em? Sex with a non-diseased person isn't dangerous at all. You'd say snogging someone with Herpes was dangerous and people shouldn't do it right? But do you then try to say we need a law forbidding kissing? Kissing someone without Herpes isn't dangerous. Same with sex.
And while homosexual sex doesn't have the same issue with reproduction heterosexual sex does, it's illegal too for the sake of appearences. If they legalized that people'd naturally wanna know why the double standard. But I think if governments just admitted the real reason for AoC people'd accept it. It's the smokescreens people aren't buying and rightly so.
Claiming a teen's brain doesn't finish maturing until the mid-20s is only partially true.
"According to recent findings, the human brain does not reach full maturity until at least the mid-20s. (See J. Giedd in References.) The specific changes that follow young adulthood are not yet well studied, but it is known that they involve increased myelination and continued adding and pruning of neurons. As a number of researchers have put it, "the rental car companies have it right." The brain isn't fully mature at 16, when we are allowed to drive, or at 18, when we are allowed to vote, or at 21, when we are allowed to drink, but closer to 25, when we are allowed to rent a car."
Young Adult Development Project
"Although such research is currently underway, many neuroscientists argue that empirical support for a causal relationship between neuromaturational processes and real-world behavior is currently lacking [4].
Despite the lack of empirical evidence, there has been increasing pressure to bring adolescent brain research to bear on adolescent health-and-welfare policy. For example, in the policy process, adolescent brain immaturity has been used to make the case that teens should be considered less culpable for crimes they commit; however, parallel logic has been used to argue that teens are insufficiently mature to make autonomous choices about their reproductive health [5]."
Adolescent Maturity and the Brain The Promise and Pitfalls of Neuroscience Research in Adolescent Health Policy
While the above is true, the brain is done developing for the most part around puberty. Only the final 10-15% of it keeps growing to age 25 or so. And as stated above, whether this continued development actually affects real-world decision making isn't known. But what is known is the legal issues tied to age are hypocritical as stated well in the first example. If we're so concerned with the sexual exploitation of "children," why are "children" allowed to enlist in the military at 17 (or younger for delayed-enlistement programs?) Why are children allowed to drive at 16 but in many states not have sex until 17 or 18? These sorts of inconsistent logic is why people then oppose AoCs for sex - they don't have the actual reaosning to base their conclusions on. And the reasons cited are too obviously bunk.
Want people to support things, be honest with them. Set the bar higher and people will strive to meet it. Set it too low and they'll trip over it.
It isn't even about imposing an anti-sex religion onto everyone as I once thought. It's much simpler. The real reason for sexual age of consent laws is: population control.
If we allowed everyone who wanted to have sex, to have sex (from puberty onwards when the body becomes sexually mature and starts to produce sex hormones resulting in a desire for sex,) population problems we have already would only be multiplied many times. China and India used to have little if any population control and a very 'make as many children as you can' mentality. The result was well over a billion people for each country and depletion of finite resources resulting in widespread famines.
Some US states even mention reproduction in the texts of their legal statutes as in California's,
"WHY SO MUCH ATTENTION TO STATUTORY RAPE?
California has the highest teen birth rate in the U.S.
Every 8 minutes, a teenager in California has a baby.
3 of 4 births to High School girls are fathered by adults.
Men over 25 account for twice as many teen births as boys under 18 years old.
The Average Age difference between the teen victim and the adult defendant in cases filed by the District
Attorney is 7years 9months.
Men over 20 are responsible for 5 times as many births among junior high school girls.
In California almost 70% of teen births are fathered by adult men. "
So California's AoC has been 18 for quite some time. Babies cost states and countries money and resources whether people are married or not. And a pregnant teenager suually drops of school, goes on welfare, and never really becomes as productive in society as those that don't drop out.
One could say then the reasons for AoC laws is entirely selfish and money-based which is true, but in the big picture it's much more than that.
The world's grossly overpopulated as-is. If everybody was allowed to have sex from about 13 onwards, problems tied to overpopulation like climate change (industry to sustain those people, homes for them to live in, jobs, water, electricty production, etc. all have to go up when the population does until resources are depleted.)
So governments have a national as well as international/blobal interest in keeping runaway population growth in check. Claiming then that AoC laws are about protecting children is simply a political lie since encouraging birth control and abortions is usually a win-lose political notion. But saying you're "protecting children from pedophiles" is a win-win.
Sex isn't anything anyone needs to be protected from, and virtually every adult eventually desires. What about diseases? What about 'em? Sex with a non-diseased person isn't dangerous at all. You'd say snogging someone with Herpes was dangerous and people shouldn't do it right? But do you then try to say we need a law forbidding kissing? Kissing someone without Herpes isn't dangerous. Same with sex.
And while homosexual sex doesn't have the same issue with reproduction heterosexual sex does, it's illegal too for the sake of appearences. If they legalized that people'd naturally wanna know why the double standard. But I think if governments just admitted the real reason for AoC people'd accept it. It's the smokescreens people aren't buying and rightly so.
Claiming a teen's brain doesn't finish maturing until the mid-20s is only partially true.
"According to recent findings, the human brain does not reach full maturity until at least the mid-20s. (See J. Giedd in References.) The specific changes that follow young adulthood are not yet well studied, but it is known that they involve increased myelination and continued adding and pruning of neurons. As a number of researchers have put it, "the rental car companies have it right." The brain isn't fully mature at 16, when we are allowed to drive, or at 18, when we are allowed to vote, or at 21, when we are allowed to drink, but closer to 25, when we are allowed to rent a car."
Young Adult Development Project
"Although such research is currently underway, many neuroscientists argue that empirical support for a causal relationship between neuromaturational processes and real-world behavior is currently lacking [4].
Despite the lack of empirical evidence, there has been increasing pressure to bring adolescent brain research to bear on adolescent health-and-welfare policy. For example, in the policy process, adolescent brain immaturity has been used to make the case that teens should be considered less culpable for crimes they commit; however, parallel logic has been used to argue that teens are insufficiently mature to make autonomous choices about their reproductive health [5]."
Adolescent Maturity and the Brain The Promise and Pitfalls of Neuroscience Research in Adolescent Health Policy
While the above is true, the brain is done developing for the most part around puberty. Only the final 10-15% of it keeps growing to age 25 or so. And as stated above, whether this continued development actually affects real-world decision making isn't known. But what is known is the legal issues tied to age are hypocritical as stated well in the first example. If we're so concerned with the sexual exploitation of "children," why are "children" allowed to enlist in the military at 17 (or younger for delayed-enlistement programs?) Why are children allowed to drive at 16 but in many states not have sex until 17 or 18? These sorts of inconsistent logic is why people then oppose AoCs for sex - they don't have the actual reaosning to base their conclusions on. And the reasons cited are too obviously bunk.
Want people to support things, be honest with them. Set the bar higher and people will strive to meet it. Set it too low and they'll trip over it.
