Char. Limit said:Why don't we just give custody to the father, as the mother, by committing a felony, showed she's not responsible enough to raise a child alone?
This logic would be fine if there were also not a law against people over a certain age having sex with people under that age. It's an extremely important law. Without it pedophiles would descend on children in droves and with impunity as soon as they could get to them. Within a generation the population would be swollen with emotionally screwed up people who alternate between promiscuity, drugs, drinking and child seduction in turn. There'd be no end of unwanted pregnancies and a huge increase in gangs of feral kids trying to fend for themselves. It would become like the worst parts of the worst third world cities.TheStatutoryApe said:No, the law does not say that the kid has no choice regarding sex. The law says that the kid is unable to make informed choices about sex. As I have pointed out over and over again minors are held legally responsible for their decisions despite the law saying that they are incapable of informed decision.
The issue here is that there is a third person involved, the child. The child has rights and each parent has rights and responsibilities to the child. I am not talking about a deterrent for the minor, I am talking about the minor learning that there are consequences for their actions and not learning that because of circumstance they are allowed to ditch their responsibilities. No young person is led to believe that because they are a minor they hold no responsibility for damage that they inflicted upon property if they are vandals. If that minor is in the presence of an adult the adult will be held responsible for contributing the delinquency of the minor (victimizing the minor) but the minor will still be held responsible for the damage they caused. Why? Because they need to learn responsibility, not how to avoid responsibility.
So in this case we are talking about a young man who has parented a child. He is supposed to have legal rights and responsibilities to that child. The legality here is separate from the issue of his relationship with the mother. The child has not victimized him and so his responsibility there can not be removed. You might even say that the child is the victim of the stupid immaturity of its mother and father. And especially if he wishes to claim rights to the child (as he and his family are requesting custody) then he can not deny responsibility.
Char. Limit said:Why don't we just give custody to the father, as the mother, by committing a felony, showed she's not responsible enough to raise a child alone?
In what manner would you suggest teaching young males about taking responsibility for getting someone pregnant and having a child? Keeping in mind that he does in fact have a child out there and that not being made to have any responsibility for it runs counter to the notion of responsibility which you are attempting to instill in him.Averagesupernova said:There are plenty of ways teenagers can learn responsibility without being stuck for 18 years of child support through a parent that comitted statutory rape.
That seems like quite a slippery slope. I have not said that laws regarding statutory rape ought to be pushed back to an earlier age. I am referring to the law as it stands. As the law stands minors are held legally responsible for their actions, although usually to some lesser degree than adults, and this is probably important as otherwise minors would go about willy nilly reeking havoc on society... sex drugs rock and roll ... increased teen pregnancies ... poor single parent homes... babies dumped in trashcans... ect ect... because there are no consequences. The slope cuts both ways.zoobyshoe said:This logic would be fine if there were also not a law against people over a certain age having sex with people under that age. It's an extremely important law. Without it pedophiles would descend on children in droves and with impunity as soon as they could get to them. Within a generation the population would be swollen with emotionally screwed up people who alternate between promiscuity, drugs, drinking and child seduction in turn. There'd be no end of unwanted pregnancies and a huge increase in gangs of feral kids trying to fend for themselves. It would become like the worst parts of the worst third world cities.
...
You may feel the age of legal consent ought to be pushed back to 15 since a 15 year old can understand sexual reproduction, but I personally knew where babies came from at age 8, and I reached puberty at 11.
Sure.Zoob said:Averagesupernova is right: adults, legal adults, have to refrain from having sex with minors.
Never the less they (or their families) are held responsible for the children they produce. If she were under eighteen he would be held responsible. Why should this change simply because she should have known better? We are not talking about damages sustained as a result of her indiscretion. If she wanted money for an abortion I would not say he owed it. If she wanted money for hospital bills associated with the pregnancy even I would not agree. But we are talking about a living breathing human being that is possessed of rights its own. By asking for child support she is acting as a legal representative of the child to whom the support is owed. Equating the child to the victimizer and relinquishing its rights due to her indiscretions is not fair to the child.Zoob said:Minors aren't emotionally equipped to handle sex and all it's consequences.
I am focusing on the point of contention, that being the male and whether or not he should have to support his child. I do not believe I have relieved the mother of her guilt or responsibilities in any way. She is likely to go to prison. I have not said she should stay out of prison and squeeze this kid for all she can.Zoob said:I don't understand why you're focusing on this 15 year old guy when the 19 year old girl is really the one who needs a lesson on responsibility and consequences here. Is she still going to be going after 15 year olds when she's 35 and trying to squeeze child support out of them?
Averagesupernova said:Char. Limit has a good point.
Char. Limit said:Statutory, there is a better way...
give him custody of the child! Maybe that way he'll learn real responsibility instead of being a human wallet, only supporting his child financially.
-TheStatutoryApe said:If he and his family are capable of taking care of the child then sure. Though I do not see how this is any less of a burden to place upon a young man, whom we apparently can not expect to take responsibility for these actions, than asking him to pay $50 a month in child support.
TheStatutoryApe said:If he and his family are capable of taking care of the child then sure. Though I do not see how this is any less of a burden to place upon a young man, whom we apparently can not expect to take responsibility for these actions, than asking him to pay $50 a month in child support.
No problem. It was mostly a rhetorical question anyway.Averagesupernova said:I'm not going to get into specifics like you ask Statutory.
TheStatutoryApe said:No problem. It was mostly a rhetorical question anyway.
I will not deny that this is a rather muddy situation legally. If it were my decision I would likely withhold any responsibility for child support until he has turned eighteen unless he and his family attempt to take advantage of legal custody rights.
Averagesupernova said:-
Oh give me a break. His parents are interested in helping him get started raising the child.
Char. Limit said:It's not a lesser burden, yes. However, it is a more justifiable and indeed better burden to place upon the new father, whose parents support him; exactly the opposite of the felon mother.
I meant if I were the judge. And the child did not screw anyone over.Averagesupernova said:I screwed you over when you were a kid.
Char. Limit said:Maybe people should make better choices in marriage... and remember that, in the end, odds are against the marriage contract staying whole.
zoobyshoe said:Actually, I'm curious: what is your country, and what's your Native Language? I've never been able to figure it out from your use of English.
TheStatutoryApe said:Informed Consent. As I have already noted many young people are held legally responsible for their actions when they are underage. The law acknowledges that a minor can do a thing of their own freewill even as it says that they are too young to make responsible decisions on their own. In the case of sex with an adult if they are unwilling, not just unable to render informed consent, then it is rape. If they willingly have sex with the adult then it is statutory rape because although they have rendered consent they are legally considered unable to render informed consent.
TheStatutoryApe said:I meant if I were the judge. And the child did not screw anyone over.
It is a rather unhealthy attitude to take of equating the child to the mother and completely unfair as I have already pointed out. I think that this is a symptom of our modern dysfunctional family portrait.
Think of this. A friend of mine had a kid. His wife cheated on him several times and he stayed with her anyway so he could be there for his son. One day she left him and took their son with her. She obviously got custody. Then one day she decided to inform my friend that she had put in notice with her job, gave one months notice to her landlord, and spent all of her savings on a downpayment for a house in another state to which she would be leaving by the end of the month with their son.
My friend was rather torn. She just screwed him out of being able to see his son except perhaps once or twice a year. He wanted to get back at her and decided to file a complaint with the court since she is not legally able to take their son out of state without his consent. What it came down to though was that she had so perfectly set up the whole thing that there was no way she could stay without being broke and homeless along with their son. His choice was to try to keep her here because it was his right and allow his son to be homeless and suffer or allow her to leave and keep custody so that his son could have a home and food and such.
He was quite ready to keep her here. He wanted to do it because of how much he despised her for the tricks she had pulled and how she had tried illegally to take away his son. When he thought of his son being homeless he only thought of how that could help him to get custody in court.
Now how disgusting and despicable is that? This is the sort of thing that kids go through in these situations. Parents hate each other so much that any responsibility to their child becomes some evil perpetrated by their ex. This is how these kids get screwed up.
Not bad looking face indeed. No blame from me to her. She got something which reminds me of Jessica Simpson.MotoH said:in related news: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,588707,00.html"
She isn't that bad looking to be honest. Still illegal, but not ugly.
zoobyshoe said:The issue is not whether or not he knows sex can lead to pregnancy but whether he is emotionally and intellectually mature enough to turn down an opportunity to have sex with a 19 year old (or, at least, to insist on birth control). We can find 10 year olds who know how babies are made, but it suddenly becomes less possible, because of their age, to ascribe responsibility to them if they are talked into sex by someone over 18. By your logic any sexual predator could avoid prosecution by explaining exactly how babies are made to their victim no matter what their age.
In the case of this 19 year old girl, if she can get child support from a 15 year old she can also get it from a 10 or 11 year old (as long as he's past puberty), provided she can prove he understood sexual reproduction. (I used to mow lawns, rake leaves, and shovel snow after school and on weekends when I was 10. Any 10 year old could be required to do that to come up with $50.00 a month child support.)
To deter people from taking sexual advantage of children the law has set an age of legal consent. People simply don't mature emotionally and intellectually at the same rate so this ends up being somewhat arbitrary, but as we consider younger and younger children it's clear there does have to be a law. Once that age is set it has to be stuck to. Making an exception for a 15 year old is as good as making an exception for a 10 year old, and you pretty much end up with no law.
The alternative to the arbitrary (but more or less reasonable) cut off age we now have would be some sort of state run sexual maturity test or screening procedure. Imagine the legal power struggle between liberals and conservatives, the religious and non-religious, over what criteria the test should include. Imagine the outrage of 30, 40, and 50 year olds who are screened and deemed too sexually reckless to legally have sex. Imagine 20 year old married couples who tied the knot mostly because the guy knocked the girl up who get barred from legally having sex with each other because of a history of irresponsible sexual behavior. It's a proposal worthy of Michael Critchton novel: rife with both obvious and also unexpected twists and turns. A can of worms.
Some people seem to be willing to bend the law when the issue of taxpayers footing the bill for raising the baby comes to mind.
If we imagine a different scenario where the 19 year old seducer had been a homosexual male who caught herpes from the 15 year old male and was suing the 15 year old for medical expenses, how would it change people reaction?
Then let's change it to a 19 year old male who caught herpes from a 15 year old girl and was suing her for medical expenses. What then?
Then let's consider a mugger who cuts his victim with a knife in the course of the robbery and then sues him when he finds out he's contracted aids from the blood?
It seems to me any damages or problems you create for yourself in the course of committing a felony are your problem and not the victims.
DanP said:The issue is, again, that we legally deem a 15 years old unable of informed consent, while we
keep him totally responsible for other actions, and hence we indirectly recognize the very faculty we deny in statutory rape laws.
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You can't have both denial of ability to have informed consent and holding him responsible for everything else without a terrible hypocrisy.
TheStatutoryApe said:The reason for statutory rape laws is that engaging is sexual activity brings with it the possibility of certain life changing repercussions and legal responsibilities that the adult is fully expected to be aware of and the minor is not. By having sex with the minor the adult has exposed the minor to these issues which they are legally considered ill equipped to handle.
DanP said:Yes, I understand the law and it's reasons. It's not a problem of how it works or why, it's a problem of numbers.
The issue is that "if you consider a man ill equipped to handle" sex, you should consider him ill equipped for just everything else. This is the hypocrisy. We consider the minor ill equipped to handle sex, but if he happens to commit a felony we can send him to be tried in an adult court of law. So the poor guy is ill equipped to handle sex consequences, but it is very well equipped to be treated as an adult when we want to **** him and try him as a fully responsible adult.
Most of the world fortunately recognizes this hypocrisy and sets very close age differences for age of responsibility and consent.
It is in only in several legislation where conservative (and probably influenced by religious politic forces) this hypocrisy is raised to the rank of law, by making the age of consent disproportionately higher. (I speak mainly of any legislation which uses > 16 as age of consent).
15 would be the ideal age of consent (as it is in many EU states) or maximum 16.
BobG said:And from this, we've ridden the game out to the point where we say that laws against minors having sex are to protect boys from the consequences of sex?
BobG said:The intent of laws against minors having sex is to protect females from becoming a teenage mom with no support from the dad. The law is intended more for the consequences of teenage pregnancy on the infant than on the teen.
BobG said:I never understood the logic behind "If he's old enough to vote, he ought to be allowed to drink!"
DanP said:I am sorry, but this is simply not true.
The statutory rape laws only incriminate adults performing sex with minors which are under the age of consent. Two underage partners of close or same age do not fall in this category. You can't legislate the age at which one decides have sex. Sex between two minors over a certain age , but below age of consent, is as probable to produce offspring as it is sex between an underage and an adult. Furthermore, it is not incriminate by laws.
BobG said:But, regardless of how well it works in practice, it is based on the idea that the more mature person could bully, or at least manipulate the younger person into making decisions they normally wouldn't make; and decisions that are going to have some long term consequences. It's the consequences that make it a crime. It wouldn't be a crime to manipulate a teen into cleaning their house, mowing their lawn, or some other activity that had no serious consequences.
Char. Limit said:Even so... let's say that we change the age of consent to 16.
It doesn't change the fact that this person is the victim of a felony crime, and has to pay money to the person who made him a victim.