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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
16 is the age of consent in the UK, Ireland, Australia and (I thought) the US.
That's where.
Case by case?! Come on. You know that's impossible. Each and every single case should have no fundamental baseline upon which to proceed? That's a recipe for procedural chaos. And it's also contrary to hundreds of years of legislative theory, case law and precedent.
So what? The woman was her teacher. If the girl had been 18 before the sexual relationship, then I would have simply labeled this as inappropriate. As it occured when she was 14, it is (plain and simple) child sexual abuse. I can't believe you're defending it.
That's why statutory rape and "forceable rape" (if such a legal term really exists) have different sentencing.
So what? The woman exploited her position to sexually abuse a child; indeed, to rape a child.
If laws are not derived from the social beliefs of a community, then what are they derived from?
Actually, I'm confused by this position. What on Earth do you think laws are? By simple definition, laws enact the social mores of the society in which they are defined. How else can you see them?
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. That "functionalism" is indicative of a denial that laws reflect the social and moral context in which they are defined? Or that Emile Durkheim postulates that laws do reflect such notions?
That's most certainly a Marxist political theory; I'm not familiar with Weber. I'm surprised you subscribe to Marxism which has proven to be completely and utterly wrong in almost all its precepts.
Now, dont' get me wrong. I consider myself a socialist. Perhaps more accurately, a democratic socialist. I'm certainly far to the left of most people on this board. And I was raised in a household full of Marxist (and even Leninist) political theory, practice and paraphenalia. So I'm not ignorant of its tenets. But everyone knows (or should know) that Marxist politics is simply bankrupt and irrelevant in today's society.
I simply don't understant this statement. In my mind, this has nothing to do with the sexual preference of the perpertrator, but everything to do with sexually abusing (and raping) a minor.
Looking forward to it mate! Nothing like a good political sparring match... 
Mr Mephisto |
In the US, we have a hodgepodge of age of consent laws. They span from 13 to 18--and it isn't hinged on liberal vs. conservative. In fact, the rural states have the lowest ages while the urban ones have the highest.
The fact that one's actions in Missouri (14) could be legal, but a felony in California (18) is about as apparant as it gets that there is no inherent immorality in the act--unless someone here is going to argue that certain states just condone "child abuse." No, I think it's more accurate to say that even in our states sexual abuse is a term employed in a certain context that may or may not reflect the views of the community in question.
Marxism hasn't been discredited. I don't know why you believe it is, but that's probably for another thread. Anyway, I didn't say I was a marxist, but a conflict theorist, which most certaintly hasn't been discredited. In any case, marx has a lot more to offer than just his political observations. Durkheim, and functionalists after him, argued that laws were the embodiment of a community's morality. If you study the law, you study their most important values. If you're interested, that's who would make that argument. Many problems exist with this claim, beginning with the fact that it's teleological. But in the context of this thread, I'll again point out that even within the states, sexual consent laws are so diverse and contradictory that one would be hard pressed to continue believing they reflect the value system of the citizens they constrain. It's far more accurate to understand values as a reflection of the law in place--not the other way around. For example, the laws you have in your mind were in place long before you even knew they existed. Yet, you base your analysis of the "rightness" of this situation on those laws as if they reflect concrete truth (Marx would call this "reification"--discredited or not
).
The fact that the woman and the girl are lesbians is taboo enough to have been made a subtext of the story. Seemingly irrelevant points are included in the story, such as that the woman is married to another woman, that she adopted a son, & etc. and these points are carrying weight with people opposed to what happened, including people in this thread. Only recently have states even allowed same-sex relations, and not long before that they had separate clauses for minor-same sex relations. For example, even in Michigan the law used to have separate penalties for having sex with minors under 16 if the relationship was hetero yet the age of consent changed to 18 in a homosexual relationship. So while you don't see the relevance of what type of relationship this is, the law used to care and the jury members, depending on how taboo they see homosexual behavior will certainly see it as relevant. But hopefully you can understand now why I would argue that these laws are reflecting interests of particular politically legitimate groups and not the objective morality of an act. If that were the case, the legal age wouldn't shift simply because the youth changed his or her sexual preference.