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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rainy_Day_Woman who wrote (29214)	2/16/2005 12:40:10 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

btw, where does it say 12 year old sexual activity was not unusual or condemned 100 years ago? Go read the marriage records. Perhaps I should have made it more than 100, at least as far as Europe is concerned. Maybe by 1900 the ages were up some. But go back to the 1600s, 1700s, etc., and you'll find many marriages of that age. And in other cultures, child brides were the norm. I don't have the references in front of me, but from my reading I believe that while India was a part of the British Empire, child marriage was still quite normal. just under 150 years ago slavery was the norm, tar and feathering was done, lynching was done no one in their right mind would defend any of that or try and find the "philosophical reasons for this shift" Actually, I do think that the history of slavery and the transition in this country from a slave to a non-slave society is quite interesting and worth study. It is, I grant, complicated by the racial aspects of slavery in America, which makes it very difficult to study dispassionately, but keep in mind that slavery has been an accepted part of human culture for most of the history of the human race. And there are still areas of the world where slavery continues to be practiced, though not legally since the Western nations have managed to impose their opposition to slavery pretty universally. And you will find a number of informed people who take the position that slavery in fact, if not in name, is alive and well right here in the US today. So it is not by any means a dead issue. It is worth figuring out why people even today hold others in slavery, since understanding a problem is usually an important step in eliminating it.

To: Rainy_Day_Woman who wrote (29214)	2/16/2005 12:45:07 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

how can you honestly even begin to think a 12 year child in any given way or form should be allowed to be sexually exploited by an adult? I don't. I don't think anybody of any age should be allowed to be sexually exploited by anybody of any age. Child, adult, I don't care. Sexual exploitation is, under my personal moral code, wrong, period. The issue, of course, is whether a given relationship is exploitive or not. Some radical feminists hold that EVERY male-female sexual relationship is inherently exploitive. I don't hold that view. I'm not sure, personally, why it is inherently okay for a 14 year old to have intercourse with a 12 year old, but not for a 15 year old to. (That happens to be the law for statutory rape in our state.) The day before a girl turns 15, it's not rape fpr her to have sex with a 12 year old boy. The next day, on her 15th birthday, it is. Does that mean that one day determines when a relationship is sexually exploitive and when it's not? Under the law, yes. But under your code of morals?