Posted by Porker on April 18, 2001 at 12:27:49:
In Reply to: Re: Don't know, but it would seem to change things posted by Matiz on April 18, 2001 at 12:02:29:
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Matiz, I don't disagree with anything you said, but the status of age of consent laws almost defines the word arbitrary. In CA, it's 18. I believe there are even harsher statutes for messing with minors in the <15 set, as there probably should be. BUT in other US states there are some rather bizarre laws in this regard. At one point in time (and I believe it has never been repealed) there was a law in a southern state that a child of 11 could MARRY with the consent of his/her parents. Fornication is STILL statutorily illegal in that state and many others, though not nearly as many as still have sodomy laws. Is a law a law if nobody prosecutes it? Many laws banning sex and/or marriage with partners of another race have never been removed from the books due to their clearly unconstitional nature. Obviously nobody's gonna go to bat for the horny pervert accused of statutory rape. But this is an obvious example of the law being 'whatever the moral majority (in the literal sense) says the law is'. The Zona Norte can be an example of what happens when there seems to be a complete absence of such a moral majority. Most would agree that this is BAD, but I would argue that so is a will-nilly blind acceptance of an arbitrary age of consent statute that often differs with 'natural law'.
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