Last week, we had a discussion on Polimom about Childhood and the Age of Consent. The post itself stemmed directly from the Foley scandal, and I wrote about some of the historical aspects of our current laws.
A number of readers, in both comments and email, found the subject interesting, so I though perhaps y’all would enjoy this more lengthy article, found via The Debate Link (who has an analysis, too).
It’s called Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse: Science, Religion, and the Slippery Slope, and the section titled Religious Tradition and the “Slippery Slope” is most relevant to the angle we discussed here at Polimom.
Some snippets:
One major problem with this “slippery slope” argument is that certain assumptions about our moral traditions are just plain wrong. An honest examination of the historical record indicates that Biblical law and the Judeo-Christian tradition, far from condemning pedophilia, often condoned sexual relations between adults and children. The contemporary social and legal taboo against sex with children developed only gradually over the centuries, and did not become firmly established until the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries.
From the section on Judaism:
According to the Talmud, the recommended age for marriage is sometime after twelve for females, and thirteen for males. Marriage below these ages was generally frowned upon. However, a father was allowed to betroth his daughter to another man at an earlier age, and sexual intercourse was regarded as a valid means of sealing a betrothal. The age limit for betrothal through sexual intercourse was shockingly low. According to the Talmud, “A girl of the age of three years and one day may be betrothed by intercourse.”42
And from the Christianity section (this will sound familiar from the prior post):
Christian canon law followed Roman law in setting the minimum age of marriage at twelve for females and fourteen for males. The logic behind these marital age limits was that these were the approximate ages of puberty for both genders, indicating readiness for procreation.52 In ancient Rome, among both pagans and Christians, marriage at an early age was frequent. Betrothals often occurred even before puberty, although the consummation of marriage through intercourse usually did not take place until after the girl’s first menstruation.
From the conclusion:
As for the “slippery slope” argument, the biggest mistake many social conservatives make is to assume that the contemporary taboo against sexual relations with children is a longstanding part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is only now coming under assault by the left. In fact, the Judeo-Christian tradition and many other religious traditions tolerated and even affirmed pedophilic relationships for centuries. The contemporary taboo against such relationships developed only a little over one hundred years ago, as people became more enlightened about the potentially damaging aspects of sexual relations between persons of unequal maturity and power.
According to the author, the protections society put into place are the direct result of liberal thought, which I interpreted as rights for children, labor laws, etc. All in all, very interesting.
So — what think ye?
I was thinking of this topic as I read one of my favorite Chron online comics (Between Friends) this week. One of the gals has been talking about how her grandmother had been sent away from home at age 8 to work for another family. The pedophilia angle hasn’t come up, but there’s been a lot of ‘how could you send your child away?’
I suspect that the change came when some woman remembered how she felt when she was forced into a marriage or consummation at too young an age, and she managed to get to a social place where she she had the power to say, “This *will not* happen to my daughter.” Or some powerful man recalled his first and beloved young wife (or sister) dying in childbirth because her hips were too skinny, and vowing that his beloved daughter would not suffer so.
Human nature suggests that people are not too likely to mess with common practices unless they have a strong personal crisis. You don’t make open container laws because you wake up one day & realize it’s stupid to drink & drive. You make them because some MADD mom is banging on a drum outside the capitol building after her son was killed by a drunken driver.
Think we’re comparing apples and oranges. Ancient societies faced different problems that gave rise to different solutions, chief among them a much shortnened life span and high infant mortality and high maternal mortality. The number of women dying in childbirth was probably much higher than it is today. All of those factors severely limited choices available to our ancestors. Life was short and brutal and survival of the species, indeed, survival at all, was a daily struggle. My guess as well is that under such circumstances, childhood itself was severely abreviated; kids had no choice but to grow up real quick. In today’s society, it may be the case that we see an earlier onset of puberty but at the same token, we’re seeing a great delay in “growing up.” Under our circumstances, practices such as you mention are completely unecessary and those who advocate lowering the age of consent and legalizing pedophilia are, in my opinnion simply perves seeking to exploit kids. And with the delay in mental and emotional maturity, the evidence I’ve seen indicates that such practices cause great damage to the victim and hence, society itself, because such exploitation interrupts childhood development at a particularly sensitive stage, i.e., just about the time the child is developing empathatic understanding and concern for others. Once that development is interrupted, the victim progesses in age without a sense of empathatic caring for others and is highly likely to themselves become exploitative child molestors. Hence……the vicious cycle.
Glide —
You’re exactly right about the cycle of childhood sexual abuse. Furthermore, there are pedophiliac groups that leverage precisely these arguments to support their sickness.
::shudder::
Fortunately, that cycle can be broken – though it probably isn;t the easiest thing to do. What scares me is that someday some dimbulb is gonna combine Glide’s statement with Bill O’Reilly’s call for protecting society from child sexual predators at any cost, and decide to simply toss the victims of child sexual abuse into a dark cage for the rest of their lives.
~EdT.
Ed T said; “toss the victims of child sexual abuse into a dark cage for the rest of their lives.” Actually, I’ve met people who have already expressed those very same sentiments. There are many scary/stupid people out there.