The age of consent needs to be set at eleven!

[Kelvin Mace]

Want a drink?

You need to be eleven.

Want to smoke?

You need to be eleven.

Want to join the Marines?

You need to be eleven.

Want to vote?

You need to be eleven.

Want to have sex or get married?

You need to be eleven.

Want to drive a car?

You need to be eleven.

Want to hold state/federal office?

You need to be eleven.

Why eleven you ask?

Because since we have insisted on trying children as young as eleven as "adults", children as young as eleven should be entitled to all the perks of adults.

I am freakin' tired of the age of consent being whatever is convenient for adults. So either set the "legal age" to eleven, or set it to twenty-one.

Yes, I realize that there are arguments for certain responsibilities at certain ages due to differing maturity levels, but when we can seek the death penalty, life imprisonment, and 15 years sentences for crimes committed for ages ranging from 11 to 17, then the age needs to be either 11 or 21.

Children in our society are precious jewels in utero, yet fair game once ex utero. Society allows then to be slaughtered once out of the womb, with little ramifications if it involves a gun, yet when a child commits a crime with a gun, American society goes medieval on their ass.

Child physical and sexual abuse is institutionalized and accepted, but when children strike back, severe punishment is demanded.

What am I so angry about?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-kentucky-boy-accidental-fatal-shooting-sister-20130501,0,2768797.story

http://www.politicususa.com/bill-donohue-church-abuse-victims-were-active-participants.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/sex-abuse-scandal-did-archbishop-ratzinger-help-shield-perpetrator-from-prosecution-a-684970.html

http://www.thenation.com/blog/172841/media-play-down-pope-benedicts-role-sex-abuse-scandals#

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/worst_horrifying_new_trend_posting_rapes_to_facebook/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/21/aclu-condemns-prosecution-of-florida-teen-over-lesbian-relationship/

And the list goes on...

The age of consent should be eleven until such time as society's adults stop acting like two year-olds.

[SlimJimmy]

1. I was ready to pounce on this OP until I read through it and a couple of the links.

You've made some good points here. Actually, I think the age of consent should be 18, but that's just my opinion.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. And 35 to join the military

That would cut WAY down on the number of wars we get into.



A serious argument can be made for 18, but this "trying children as adults" crap is an abomination.

[SlimJimmy]

3. Agree (nt)

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. Traditionally 13 is the most common point of transition. Prior to that, parents were held

responsible for the actions of their children. Adolescence is a completely artificial construct, as is the nuclear family, BTW.

[Kelvin Mace]

5. I wouldn't say it is an artificial construct

We know from a medical and developmental standpoint that the adolescent brain is undergoing a massive number of changes in its transition from "childhood" to "adulthood".

But we either need to drop pre-20th concepts of "legal age of consent" and adopt a modern, science-based criteria, or simply adopt laws which at least are consistent.

[Egalitarian Thug]

8. Those changes are the point. They define the difference between a child and an adult and the passage

of responsibility. This arbitrary in-betweenness is the time when the person learns the meaning of responsibility. Prolonging and shielding the young adult from the process yields large numbers of middle aged people with the mentality of children, something I for one, do not find to be a good thing.

[randome]

15. So...what? An army of trained psychologists examining every child in the country?

Age limits are set because of where the majority of children mature. They are not meant to be infallible.

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[Kelvin Mace]

19. You are missing the point

The laws are nonsense, since the are selective enforced or ignored as it best suits society, i.e. the "adults" who run things.

Explain to me why a child of eleven should face life imprisonment.

And by the way, this was a CONSCIOUS decision on the part of society, who have already set rules about when adulthood begins saying, "Fuck that, I want to punish this child as an adult because I consider the crime so heinous!'

We deliberately lie to and damage children, then punish them when the damage logically manifests as "anti-social" behaviour.

While not involving a juvenile offender, the case of Susan Smith comes to mind. When she killed her two children the prosecutor was all "Let's kill this vile woman for her crime". Yet, when Susan Smith was a child, and was repeatedly raped by her stepfather, where was the prosecutor demanding harsh punishment for him? (He was unpunished DESPITE confessing to the crimes).

[randome]

21. Totally agree with you about trying children as adults.

I thought you meant all age limits are useless and I don't see a practical way of getting around setting a number and letting it stand.

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[Kelvin Mace]

23. No, I can understand the logic

I cannot understand society making the rules, then selectively changing them when it suits their purpose.

[Shankapotomus]

6. Exactly

How can you try someone as an adult who does not have the freedom of an adult to remove themselves from an undesirable situation?

Obviously, it's not children that should be given adult rights but adults and those responsible for supervising children need to be prosecuted for their failure to control children. There is a certain risk of responsibility that must be put on parents otherwise there is no incentive for bad, uncaring parents to impart civil behavior to their children.

[Poll_Blind]

7. I recced because I think it brings up an interesting discussion but I...

...also probably disagree with you on a couple of points- all this is outside the example links you provided and a bit more general.

In Animal Farm, the pig Napoleon takes two litters of puppies away from their mothers and trains them to be enforcers, killers. They leave the story as innocents and return as villains. But how culpable are they for their villainous behavior? I'm not entirely sure the answer is an easy one for me to give.

Others will likely have different answers to such an existential question and while I may disagree with the answer, the question is worth asking.

PB

[Kelvin Mace]

10. My point is

that, as a society, we regularly abuse children. Take the Catholic Church, despite overwhelming evidence of systemic, institutionally-sanctioned child abuse, there has been practically no prosecutorial response. To put it another way, had this happened as a corporate day care, the CEO and board of directors would be facing prosecution under the RICO statues. I remember the witch hunt that ensued in my backyard over a completely fabricated case of child sexual abuse and yet the Catholic Church skates free with only civil suits to contend with.

We, as a society, pay MASSIVE lip service to protecting children, then epically fail to do so. Then, when abused children fight back, or simply act out, we punish them SEVERELY as adults.

We push children to become child-soldiers, teach them to kill, then refuse to provide any assistance with the mental damage that is done to them in war, driving them to substance abuse, violence and/or self-destruction.

We constantly pass laws (or try to pass laws) legalizing bigotry and censorship using the justification of "protecting the children", yet allow them to be slaughtered daily due to our worship of firearms to the level of sexual fetish.

I don't seriously think that letting 11 year-olds drive is advisable, but I am sick of the double standards children are subject to and am trying to drive home the point.

[dsc]

9. actually we can't seek either the death penalty nor life in prison without a specific parole date

both are banned by scotus.

[Kelvin Mace]

11. Is this a recent ruling?

The story from PA was 2011.

[dsc]

14. death penalty was a few years ago

life in prison without specific parole date is from last year. the death penalty was banned under 17 years ago but for 17 was fairly recent.

[Kelvin Mace]

22. Thank you for the update

However, even if parole is allowed, society is saying that it can suspend its own rule about when a person is an adult, in order to try a juvenile as an adult just because it will look great on some prosecutor's political resume.

[East Coast Pirate]

12. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976,

22 people have been executed for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18. All of the 22 executed individuals were males. Twenty-one of them were age 17 when the crime occurred; one, Sean Sellers (executed on February 4, 1999, in Oklahoma), was 16 years old when he murdered his mother, stepfather, and a store clerk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_juvenile_offenders_executed_in_the_United_States

US Supreme Court Bans Mandatory Life Without Parole for Youth

The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles under 18 violate the 8th Amendment. There are currently 28 states, and the federal government, that allow mandatory life without parole sentences for children.

At the heart of the decision is the recognition that it is fundamentally unjust to mandate a life sentence for children convicted of homicide without considering mitigating factors.

“The Court’s decision is very significant. It builds on prior Supreme Court cases acknowledging that teenagers are developmentally different from adults and that those differences matter a lot in determining what type of punishment is appropriate,” said Fiza Quraishi, staff attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, which signed an amicus brief authored by the Juvenile Law Center in support of Miller and Jackson. “Now, before a juvenile can be sentenced to life without parole, certain factors must be considered, like the individual youth’s background, life circumstances, and the nature of the crime.”

This decision is a critical step forward, though the US remains the only country in the world that allows youth to die in prison.

http://www.youthlaw.org/juvenile_justice/6/us_supreme_court_bans_mandatory_life_without_parole_for_youth/

[pnwmom]

13. You're got it backwards.

The age of consent protects children from predatory adults.

But I agree that we have no business trying children as adults, since their brains don't fully develop till their twenties.

[randome]

16. Also agree.

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[Kelvin Mace]

17. No, I am trying to make a point

The point being that we use the law to prosecute "predatory adults" when the "adult" is an 18 year old who had a consensual relationship when she was 17 with a 14 year-old, but the parents decided to use the law to persecute the "adult" for being gay and loving their daughter.

Meanwhile, society as a whole, ignores the rampant sexual abuse of far younger children by REAL adults just because the word "church" is attached to the child rapists.

[MindPilot]

18. Cue Max Frost and the Troopers...

I agree. On the other end of the spectrum, teens are making medical and other scientific breakthroughs. They are doing adut things and should be entitiled to adult privleges. Maybe certain milestones should be based on achievment rather than just age, for example you can drive when you have completed 10th grade.

[xtraxritical]

20. Prosecutors have WAY too much leeway laws need to be changed/enacted,

an "adult" needs to be codified nationally.

[Kelvin Mace]

26. Absolutely!

Prosecutors are the biggest distortion in the criminal justice system. They abuse their power regularly and practically never called to account for even the most flagrant misconduct.

[Android3.14]

24. What does an angry waffle sound like?

It appears the OP is upset that people do bad things to children and then sometimes punish children as if they were adults.
At least I think that's where he is going with this.
"Child physical and sexual abuse is institutionalized and accepted, but when children strike back, severe punishment is demanded."
Yup, that's what's going on. Suuuuure.
I applaud his naivete, but the connection is at best fuzzy, but more probably ludicrous.
I would bet money that if the OP worked for just five days as a substitute teacher at any middle school in the country that he would come to realize that, in some cases, abortion should be legal well within the 60th trimester.

[Kelvin Mace]

25. So, you are okay with bad things happening to kids

because?

I would bet money that if the OP worked for just five days as a substitute teacher at any middle school in the country that he would come to realize that, in some cases, abortion should be legal well within the 60th trimester.

Seriously? You believe children should eligible for execution up 19 years of age?

You make my point.

[Android3.14]

28. You had a point?

Hang on, let's try that amazing rhetorical technique in reverse, and see how well it works for me. Okay, here we go.

So your okay with letting teenage sociopaths getting away with murder without any consequences at all? Seriously? You believe adults capable of voting, marrying, raising there own children should never have to face the consequences for the crimes they commit, as long as they are still a teenager?
You make my point.

Oh wait. That's not what you actually meant, is it? Silly me.

I just thought, in your original little rant, you were feeling self-righteous and spouting off out of ignorance. However, perhaps I am in error, or maybe I didn't make my opinion clear. Let me try a translation for you.
The sentence, "I would bet money that if the OP worked for just five days as a substitute teacher at any middle school in the country that he would come to realize that, in some cases, abortion should be legal well within the 60th trimester" loosely translates to mean that you are ignorant of the motivations and viciousness of some children which renders you incapable of accurate general observations about how courts should deal with children, and that, until you gain that insight, your opinion is as worthless as your skill identifying hyperbole.

[One_Life_To_Give]

27. Was the Juvenile system intended for Mass Murderers?

I think the Juvenile system was created because we recognized the immaturity of children. That we didn't wan't to come down to hard on a Dumb kid who hadn't really reasoned through their actions. On the other hand there is also the probability that one discovers a 17yr old serial killer. How do we treat a 13yr old torturer and assassin for a drug cartel?