

Spain raises age of consent from 13 to 16 - xmpir
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/04/spain-raises-age-of-consent

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levosmetalo
What kind of taliban society do we live in if it's normal for developed
educated countries to keep rising age of consent like that? What's next,
bringing to Europe American insanity where someone is allowed to own guns,
drive cars, but not no make love? Or should we even allow sex before marriage?

Only a century ago human body was perfectly capable of having sex and
reproducing around the age of 14, and it was a norm. What happened with human
race since then? Did we somehow degenerated that we are not as capable as
before, or it's that we now allow our governments too much in the name of
"protection", "freedom" and "safety"? Do we want to live in a world when one
power should be powerful enough to project its own moral norms to all the
others? And who is the one to decide what is "right" and what is "wrong".

Pleas, just stop treating young boys and girls as immature idiots, and empower
them with the trust. You might be surprised how capable and responsible they
could grow up.

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paulhauggis
"Only a century ago human body was perfectly capable of having sex and
reproducing around the age of 14, and it was a norm. What happened with human
race since then?"

We've evolved as a society. It's the same reason women and minorities can
vote.

"Pleas, just stop treating young boys and girls as immature idiots, and
empower them with the trust. You might be surprised how capable and
responsible they could grow up."

To be honest, this creeped me out (unless you are a ~14 years old). What would
we possibly gain, as a society, by lowering the age of consent?

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wjk
What would we gain by raising the age of consent?

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ck425
It makes it far easier to prosecute people who prey on teenagers. I don't
disagree that two under 16 year olds having sex is perfectly natural and ok,
though not everyone agrees. But with the age of consent being 13 sexual
predators could easily seduce under 16s and claim they consented when in fact
being so young they had no idea what they were doing.

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wjk
Sexual predators could easily seduce 16-20 (hell, even higher) too. Why not
increase the age of consent even more if you're going by with that argument.

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notahacker
Because the circumstances in which a 13 year old may be sexually and
emotionally mature enough to consent to sex with an adult and not be a victim
of manipulation are extremely unusual. That is considerably less likely to be
the case in 16-20 year olds, for reasons which have as much to do with biology
as prevailing social opinions

I'm assuming you agree there should be some age cut off point, unless you
think sex with infants is fine and dandy so long as infants aren't looking to
testify against the paedophile.

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thaumasiotes
> I'm assuming you agree there should be some age cut off point, unless you
> think sex with infants is fine and dandy so long as infants aren't looking
> to testify against the paedophile.

Just up front, the form of that argument will lose you a lot of respect.

Here are three approaches to sex with infants that don't involve a cutoff age
at all:

\- Physical maturity threshold, e.g. menstruation / ejaculation. In a sense,
this is the approach we use to drinking and driving.

\- Mental maturity threshold -- an infant is not capable of anything, and so
is guaranteed to fall on the banned side of the line. The biggest use of this
kind of thing that I'm aware of is trying juveniles as adults.

\- Just figure that nobody wants to have sex with infants. (This isn't, in the
literal sense, true; I believe the youngest documented mother was two.
However, it can easily be so-close-to-true-that-enforcement-is-a-loss-to-
society.) This is the approach we use to prevent people from bombing trains,
subways, museums, city buses, and pretty much everything else except
airplanes.

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stuaxo
Under the new laws sex education will be removed from the curriculum ..

WTF?

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cbg0
You'd think that with the current state of the economy they would see how
useful it is to teach kids how to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

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narag
LOL! You mean like dismantling I+D and social net. Don't take that for
granted.

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the_gipsy
The reason why it is relatively low is because gipsies often marry very young,
so the purpose was to avoid discrimination against gipsies. IMO the old law
hasn't really been a problem, and the new law should pose a problem to gipsy
customs since it has clause where it allows sex if the partner is of similar
age.

