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From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: "Sexual congressmen - (nf)"
Message-ID: <5590@unc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Jul-83 16:00:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5590
Posted: Wed Jul 20 16:00:28 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jul-83 03:42:25 EDT
References: ihlpf.174
Lines: 29


    This opens a much broader question.  How just is it that we
condemn a person for having sex with a teenager?  The standards that
our society sets on minimum age of sexual consent are not universal by
any means, as anyone with knowledge of other societies is aware.
Furthermore, it is common knowledge that the organs of reproduction
are fully functional at a younger age than the 16 or 18 the law
allows them to start working at.

    It seems a very sex-negative attitude to forcefully postpone sex.
For one thing, this is an effort doomed to failure which serves no
identifiable purpose.  Teenage humans have been having sex for
millions of years.  I had sex when I was a teenager (although I am
currently living with a woman three years older than myself, so I'm
not currently having sex with any teenagers).  The biggest problem was
birth control.  It is difficult to get in a sex-negative environment.
Thus you manufacture preganancies where there need be none.  The
forbidding of sex actually worsens the problems associated with sex,
even though preventing those problems is presumably the reason for the
forbidding.  The bottom line is that it doesn't work; to ameliorate
problems you should spread information and enlightened attitudes, not
ignorance and fear.

______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney

duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill