From: pgr@crhc.uiuc.edu (Paul Ryan)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: What is Clay's real motivation?
Date: 12 Jan 1993 14:46:28 -0600
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: copland.crhc.uiuc.edu


Somebody writes:
>Personally, I believe it's a matter of individuals, not ages.

Clayton Cramer responds:
>So, you don't think that there's ever a legitimate point in drawing
>a line and saying, "Adults may not have sex with children under the
>age of N?"

Actually, I do - I would place an overriding emphasis on the protection of
children and set an arbitrary cut-off age, with a bracket allowing people
of nearly the same age to date across the cutoff.

However, if you ever bothered to read and think about what people on soc.motss
have to say instead of skimming for ammunition, you would see some important
points being raised, including:

1) any reasonable cut-off age will allow someone to have sex who isn't ready
   for it and deny sex to people who are quite ready to handle it, because
   people mature at different rates

2) arbitrary enforcement of these laws has often been used in the past
   as one more way to crack down on gays

3) people are not asexual until they are 18, and ignoring teenage sexuality
   does not make it go away

4) uninformed teenage sexuality runs a high risk of pregnancy and AIDS

5) gay teenagers are often miserable, isolated and suicidal, and desparately
   need to make contact with a community of adults who can help them through
   problems and adjustments their parents often refuse to deal with - but
   bigoted fear-mongers like Clayton want you to think that the only thing
   going on here is sex

6) we pass these laws because we are disgusted by the thought of 50 year
   old men molesting 2 year old girls, but they are applied to 21 year old
   men dating 17 year old men

7) speaking as a mutant who crossed 6 feet in the fifth grade and routinely
   bought liquor at 18, I know from experience that there are a hell of a lot
   of 17 year olds out there who do NOT look young.  when the police give 
   guys like this fake IDs and plant them in gay bars, the resulting arrests
   are about entrapping gay men, not about protecting the young.

In short, we in America are currently doing a piss-poor job of handling
child and teenage sexuality.  We ignore it for 18 years, hoping it will
go away, while indoctrinating our children into a ridiculous number of
stupid hangups.  Then, we pretend that at 18 our children magically learn 
everything they'll ever need to know about safely, happily experiencing sex.  

An open dialogue about doing a better job is long overdue.  

Clayton's knee-jerk reaction of screeming "Child Molestor! Child Molestor!
Child Molestor!  Evil Homosexual!" every time someone starts such a dialogue
is a disservice to the children he purports to place first.  Such reactions
are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Paul

-- 
Paul Ryan                  (pgr@crhc.uiuc.edu)     1308 West Main St.
Center for Reliable High-Performance Computing     Urbana, IL 61801
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign         (217) 244-7179
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc