Guest post: The breaking point for the ACLU
Originally a comment by Eava on Showing members how to gain children’s trust.
To play devil’s advocate, our laws about consent are legal fictions, not brain development. Legally minors can consent to sex in most states in the US. Depending on the ages of the minor and the adult, in some states a 14 year old can consent to sex with an 18 year old. In some states a minor can consent to vaginal intercourse, but not oral or anal sex, or the penalties are different, creating a disparity between gay and straight minors. There was a big blow up over a State Senator in California who put forth a law to equalize the penalties so a 21 year old who gets a blow job from a 16 year old boy faces the same penalties as a 21 year old who had vaginal intercourse with a 16 year old girl.
In the majority of US states a 16 year old can consent to sex with anyone regardless of how much older they are. I’d like to see a uniform age of consent in the US. It is wrong to me that someone can have legal sex in one state, but cross the state line and they’re now a criminal and their partner is now a victim. I don’t think there is anything illegal with advocating to change or even abolish age of consent laws.
But the height of irony is the organization that once fought to protect the right to spread unpopular beliefs about sex with minors has become the leading censor of spreading the idea that biological sex is real and we shouldn’t encourage children to think they can change their sex.
I think the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was the breaking point for the ACLU. They had advocated for the organizers to get the permits for the rally and the backlash, internal and external, for their role in the rally pushed the organization to try and find some line where it would not find itself complicit in white supremacist intimidation, violence, and murder. They lost a lot of donors, employees were quitting, and I think the leadership was unable to accept that the ACLU was on the side of the people marching with tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil”, marching with semiautomatic rifles and assaulting non-violent clergy, driving a car into a crowd of peaceful protesters.
They adopted a policy where they would not advocate for any organization holding an event where participants were allowed to carry weapons, which seems like a practical line to draw because it crosses from pure speech to intimidation and threats of, if not actual, violence, which aren’t protected. Unfortunately it became a slippery slope for the organization, which turned it from an organization dedicated to protecting freedom of speech to an organization dedicated to protecting “marginalized” groups from the harm of hearing ideas they do not like.
That’s how bizarre things have gotten. Defend the freedoms of pedophiles and nazis, but GC feminists are beyond the pale.
Eava, last I knew in Nebraska whether something was statutory rape or not depended on the ages of both parties. If the minor consented to sex with another minor, no laws were broken. If it was with a legal adult, it was statutory rape.
I agree that the line is arbitrary, but I also think that 16 year olds should not be considered able to consent to sex with someone much older – I think I’d be okay with 21, but eventually you get into a spot where the power hierarchy is not only present, but strong.
Since our brain development isn’t complete by 25-28, that would be the only non-arbitrary line for status to change to adult. That, though, is much too late for the age of consent, because who wants to criminalize minors playing around with learning about sex? Or being serious about learning about sex? (Other than the Christian right of course). I am not sure I see any better way to deal with the issue than forbidding sex between legal children and legal adults. For the laws to work, there has to be some line that needs to be crossed. I’ll be damned if I know where that line is.
iknklast,
A lot of jurisdictions have what are sometimes referred to as “Romeo and Juliet exceptions” to their statutory rape laws, usually based on some formulation that it’s not an offense if the accused is no more than X years older than the victim. Those exceptions are often limited themselves, so you might see a structure where under (e.g.) 14 can’t consent to sex with anyone of any age, 14-17 can with someone within 2 years, and 18 can consent.
I’d look up the specific Nebraska law for you, but there are some things I don’t want in my search history!
As a point of comparison, NZ doesn’t have any Romeo and Juliet exceptions. The age of consent is 16, except where one person is a guardian or similar, in which case it becomes 18; or the couple concerned are married. Marriage where one person is under 16 would have had to occur in an overseas jurisdiction where that is legal. If it later became apparent that the marriage was just to enable sex, that is also a crime in NZ. Even 16 & 17 year olds would need consent of the Family Court to marry. Having said that, prosecutions of children for having sex with each other are rare. Generally the family/police warn off the older party and that is the end of it.
Totally understand. I cringed when I had to look up something on Ken Ham’s site for one of my classes; I hate to have anyone I work with think I actually visit that site regularly…or at all.