I don't know if any of you watched 20/20 tonight, but it was focusing on Age of Consent laws and how insanely stupid they are.

Yes, that's right folks, I'm not shitting you: 20/20's taking our side! They didn't even go the "both sides have good arguments" approach they were all on the side of reason and anti-panic, the side of lowering AoC's and/or having sliding scale systems (within x years it's ok kind of thing), the side of understanding experimentation, the side of respecting loving relationships between intellignet, aware, loving individuals of differing age or young age. Oh, they let the opposition have their say, but what the opposition had to say was crap.

A few comments on what I saw in this show:

1/4 of teens say they've had sex when they were under 16
No state has an AoC below 16, so that's 25% of the population that the law wants to put in jail and on the registry.

When shown a story of a boy who at 14 was falsely accused of making sexual advances on his adopted 7 y/o sister (she lied: she had made advances on him... she was 7, kids do stupid things). The boy, w/o any parents nearby, took a plea bargin to avoid the long prison terms he was threatened with, and is now on the registry and on a probation of many years, despite the now 16 y/o sister having said over and over again, even at the time, that she lied, the governor of Arkansas said he'd rather be accused of "over reaching then under-reaching." He was only just recently permitted to visit his home again.

When laws about AoC were first written, people were entering puberty proper at 14 and getting married at 14, while people today enter puberty proper at 10 and are getting married at 26.


I like the way Spain does it: AoC is 13 *unless* the parents say "no". A yes is not required, but a no engages the powers of the law from that point on. Oh, and they don't have a registry system that places that falsely convicted boy alongside real child rapists with no distinction.

Trying not to get too excited about this sign of progress,
In Christ,
~CSL