Why Does it Matter to the World

[sageoffools]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/07/witaly107.xml

I stumbled across this article today, which I found both profound and highly hypocritical.
Apparently an Italian man was arrested and charged for having a relationship with a 13 year old girl. Apparently both he and the 13 year old girl express "deep love" for one another, as evidenced by some rather questionable texts that she has sent him. Earlier this week the Italian court cut his possible sentence of 12 years by 2/3 down to a little over 1 year, which he most likely will not actually have to serve. The court did this in the name of "reasonableness" and "fair justice", citing the "couple's"apparent love for one another.
This ruling, of course, has sent ripples of shock and condemnation throughout the world, even leading to teen novel writers to stand up and caution their readers against early sexual encounters, such as these.

Perhaps I am the only one that feels this way but, what does the world expect? Everywhere, from TV to radio to magazines to newspapers, we are told that sex is OK, as long as you love the person you are doing it with or, at the very least, you are having a good time. We have sex ed classes, in which we tell our children that it's OK to have sex, as long as they use protection, to avoid any consequences of their actions. Sex ed classes teaching abstinence have even been ridiculed, claiming that teens are going to have sex anyway, so we might as well tell them about it, and help them to do it safely.
In addition to telling children that it is OK to have sex, we attempt to create a horrible double-standard, and then are shocked when the support for that standard falls apart. We support homosexuality by saying that it doesn't matter who you have sex with or marry, as long as it is two consenting people. Then we arrest a man that has sex with a 13 or 14 year old, and we are shocked when he is not punished the way we think he should be. The court used as its justification the exact same argument the homosexuals use. The homosexuals claim, as I have just stated, that as long as it is two consenting people, who are we to judge them. The court in this case said that the 13 year old girl was obviously consenting, so who was this court to punish the man involved. We cannot create a double standard. Either they are both right or they are both wrong. Both instances contain the same facts and are based on the same arguments.
Perhaps it would be argued that she cannot be consenting, because she is only 13. Who is to say that she is not intelligent enough to be consenting? Children develop differently. She may be very intelligent and emotionally developed, and she might be very well aware of the decision that she is making. Who are we to judge that?
Perhaps it can be argued that this girl was influenced into these feelings by the man. Once again we have set a double standard. When a second grade child "decides" that he is transgendered, as was reported yesterday in Colorado, we "support" him in his decision. We make counselors available, we create a unisex bathroom for him to use, we hand out packets and have meetings with the children to help them accept this change. We do not question the child's decision. We do not tell him that he can't be old enough to understand what he is saying, or that he is too young to say that he is transgendered. We simply accept it, and do what we can to support him. We even create groups, like the TransYouth Family Advocates, to help "transgendered elementary school students, and even 'children as young as 5, who are realizing their true gender identity'" and their parents to be more accepting of this fact.
We say that a 14 or 15 year old is old enough to decide to abort her baby, without parental consent or knowledge, but she is not old enough to decide who she wants to have sex with.
On one hand we express our outrage and say "This is wrong!" as well we should, but on the other hand we say "There is no such thing as right and wrong, it's all about what you feel, or what seems right to you."
Once again, we are creating double standards. We craft support for our arguments with one hand, while knocking it down with the other, then we have the ignorance to express surprise when the building falls down.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Rhamiel]

I hate to say it but it is only a modern thing that people wait till their mid 20's to get married. People used to get married in their mid teens

 

[Simon_Templar]

In general, the cultural standards about age are really just cultural. In the west, our idea of what is marriagable age for girls has gotten older and older over time. In more "primative" or "traditional" culture it remains younger.

In my parents generation it was not uncommon for girls to marry at the age of sixteen. My dad's sister was married at sixteen (and not because they "had to") several of the women on my mom's side of the family married at 16 or 17.

Go back a few hundred years and marriagable age gets even younger.

From looking into the story of Mary and Joseph, I know that it wasn't unheard of for Jewish girls at the time of Jesus to be married at the age of 12 of 13.

Of course, the further back you go the more necessary things like that were as well. Life spans were shorter, child-bearing years were shorter, so people couldn't afford to wait like we do now.

But in more traditional cultures like southern asia, middle eastern cultures etc, marriagable age is still considerably younger than it is here.

I think that a very big part of this is actually the practice of arranged marriage. If you think about it, what is the reason given for age of consent laws and why people should wait to get married??
The reason is because at the younger age they are not trust worthy in picking a spouse. It is assumed that they are not capable of judging character enough, being practical enough, and of not letting emotion lead them into a bad decision.
If your father is making the decision for you and he is responsible for picking out your husband (or your wife) none of that is an issue anymore.

When you think about it this creates a somewhat unique situation for us. We are naturally wired to become interested in the opposite sex, to become romantic, and to start to "fall in love" etc during our teen years. Yet as more and more emphasis is put on waiting longer and longer in the hopes that you make a good responsible decision about your spouse, you are forced to fight longer and longer against nature, as it were. This is only complicated further by the growing trend of young people being immature much farther into their adult years. People in their 20's (and even into their 30's) today are like people in their teens were a few generations ago in terms of responsability and maturity.

Again if you go back into history a bit you find that on the male side, men were basically expected to be adults in their early teens.

But this whole issue is one in which we see that some of the things we take as "morals" are really cultural values.
Thats why people can be ok with gay marriage, but ardently oppose a 13 year old having an adult relationship. Because in our culture homosexuality has become acceptable and 13 year olds are thought of as children. In other cultures the situation would be exactly reversed. homosexuality would not be acceptable and so they'd be outraged by gay marriage, while 13 year olds might be thought of as adults so they would have no problem with a 13 year old getting married.

 

[ladyt28]

I agree with the OP that we as a society have created a bizarre double-standard. We create laws saying someone is too young to consent to sex yet allow them to define who they are sexually! We sell "sexy" bathing suits for 6 and 7 year olds (as I have heard adults call them) yet say that this is a child and their 'sexuality' should not be an issue at all. Ah, the power of commercialization!

I understand that in a historical context, younger people were expected to play a more mature role regarding sexual expectations but that society no longer exists and I would not want to see that position be used to justify young people being expected to make mature decisions regarding their sexuality - be it whom to have sex with or what their sexual orientation is.

What is suggested that we as a society do about this double-standard?

 

[SolomonVII]

This extension of childhood until the late teens and early twenties may work well for the economy and wages in general, but is is very unnatural state of affairs for teenagers themselves.

It is a difficult thing to be a teenager with your body sending you strong signals to act in one way, but for society itself making it well nigh impossible to fulfill what the body is signalling in the Godly fashion that the Bible proscribes.

And of course in today's society, super-charged with sexual sugestive messages of its own, the signals being recieved by the young person are just not coming form the body alone.

There are no easy solutions for this of course. There are good reasons why the laws are designed the way that they are, and there are more than enough sexual predators that would be more than willing to prey on the gullibility of those who are coming of age.
And the anonomous aspects of modern urban society just do not lend themselves well to more traditonal forms of parents arranging thei child's marriages either.

And really, making mothers out of thirteen year old girls tends to have the effect of placing such girls in a straightjacket for the rest of their lives as far as their own individual delvelopment goes.

It is not so much a hypocrisy that is at play then, as it it an inherent dysfunction in the way that modern society has evolved, with its highly developed technical economies and everything.

 

[Jesushelpme]

I agree with the original poster. Each child is different and each culture is different.