5 ms·

Presumably the people actually having sex believe that having sex is alright, so no one is really forcing their views on them. People don't have to hold the sa

Presumably the people actually having sex believe that having sex is alright, so no one is really forcing their views on them. People don't have to hold the same values their parents hold now for them.

webjprgm 11y ago
But the government or a school giving birth control is someone teaching the children something parents don't want taught. So you are trampling on the rights of the parents in that case. If the child were to independently decide having sex was fine then it would be about the child's freedom to choose.
- genericuser 11y ago
  The parents are free to home school their children if they do not want them to learn the curriculum being taught. If we let every parent determine the curriculum for all students, well we would never even get the curriculum defined. So what is taught has to be chosen based on what is most beneficial for the children (as a whole) to be functioning members of society, and not on parent preference.
  - fineman 11y ago
    Unfortunately "free to home school" their children is really a code-word for keeping their children inhumanely isolated for cult compliance reasons. Thought control.
- pluma 11y ago
  The rights of the parents end where the rights of the child are concerned. No person in a society lives in isolation and sometimes society has to protect a person from harmful influence by their supposed wardens. It's okay to have consensual sex. If kids aren't properly educated about sex (and the consequences having sex can bring, from biological to social), they can't have consensual sex -- but that doesn't mean they won't have sex at all. So no, sex education does not infringe on religious rights. And making condoms available to teenagers who intend on having sex doesn't either. We're not talking about teachers throwing condoms at their students yelling "Fornicate! All of you! With each other! All the time!". We're talking about making condoms available to teenagers who ask for them and letting them know they don't have to expect any invasions of their privacy as a consequence (because doing so would discourage them from asking, thus encouraging unsafe sex). Again: kids are going to have sex. Uneducated kids are going to have more dangerous sex. Educated kids are going to have safer sex. Nobody has the right to deny the kid's independent decision whether to have sex or not. But this goes both ways: not only can't teachers tell a kid whether to have sex or not, but neither can the parents. It's ridiculous that the people who fight against abortion because it infringes upon the rights of the unborn child are often the same people who then raise moral panic about children having sex and try to deny them the right to sex education (and access to things like condoms for when they decide to have sex). Especially if you consider that access to condoms and education also has a positive effect on when those kids decide to have sex, with whom and in what kind of situations -- i.e. if you properly educate kids about sex, they may even come to the realization that they are not actually ready yet and that it's okay to say "no" to horny peers.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > Nobody has the right to deny the kid's independent decision whether to have sex or not. Unless, of course, their partner is older than they are.
    - pluma 11y ago
      Correct, but only partially so. How most of US law deals with this is ridiculous (i.e. the older partner becoming a sex offender). If two minors within a certain age range have sex, they may theoretically be "raping each other", but considering that an actual criminal offense in itself is absurd. Now, an adult having sex with a child on the other hand is obviously acting criminally. It's the adult's responsibility to act in the child's best interests due to the child's lack of ability to give consent -- even if the child (for whatever reason) engages it, it's against their best interests to follow through. As for sexually active "minors" and very young adults, especially at very narrow age ranges, that's not as trivial to answer. A hard cut-off seems the most straightforward answer but creates absurd outcomes in edge cases (e.g. someone who just turned 18 having sex with someone about to turn 18 in a country where 18 is the age of consent would be considered a rapist but not if both of them were just a tiny bit younger or older). I guess it's best to have case law deal with these situations individually. Maybe I should clarify that the reason I used the word "kids" was to make it clear we're not specifically talking about "children" in the intuitive sense. The danger that six year olds will randomly decide to have sex with each other is relatively low (if we ignore "sex play", which is a different can of worms). That's not what the article is about. We're specifically talking about "kids" (i.e. minors, which depending on where you live can include anyone between 12 and 21) who are fairly likely to be already sexually active without any external motivation/dissuasion.
      - thaumasiotes 11y ago
        Was it really against Priscilla Presley's best interests to sleep with Elvis?
        pluma 11y ago
thaumasiotes 11y ago
It's a famous result that the people who believe premarital sex isn't wrong account for fairly little of the premarital sex. People do things they believe are wrong all the time. I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. [...] I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life -- namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. (Attributed to C. S. Lewis here: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/801500-mere-christianity https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/801500-mere-christiani... )
- genericuser 11y ago
  I guess I just see a disconnect between beliefs a person actually holds, and fake beliefs a person says they hold because they are under impression those are the 'correct' beliefs to hold. I mean it comes down to a definition of the word belief which we seem to disagree on. There are probably only a handful of people in this world for which our differing definitions of belief would provide the same sets of beliefs.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > I guess I just see a disconnect between beliefs a person actually holds, and beliefs a person says they hold because they are under impression those are the 'correct' beliefs to hold. How do you know which is which? I definitely haven't said "it's your belief if you claim it aloud, no matter what you really think about it". Consider the population of wives cheating on their husbands. Do you really believe that only an insignificant number of them think what they're doing is wrong? > There are probably only a handful of people in this world for which our differing definitions of belief would provide the same sets of beliefs. First, you need to establish that we differ in our definitions.

webjprgm 11y ago

But the government or a school giving birth control is someone teaching the children something parents don't want taught. So you are trampling on the rights of the parents in that case. If the child were to independently decide having sex was fine then it would be about the child's freedom to choose.

genericuser 11y ago
The parents are free to home school their children if they do not want them to learn the curriculum being taught. If we let every parent determine the curriculum for all students, well we would never even get the curriculum defined. So what is taught has to be chosen based on what is most beneficial for the children (as a whole) to be functioning members of society, and not on parent preference.
- fineman 11y ago
  Unfortunately "free to home school" their children is really a code-word for keeping their children inhumanely isolated for cult compliance reasons. Thought control.
pluma 11y ago
The rights of the parents end where the rights of the child are concerned. No person in a society lives in isolation and sometimes society has to protect a person from harmful influence by their supposed wardens. It's okay to have consensual sex. If kids aren't properly educated about sex (and the consequences having sex can bring, from biological to social), they can't have consensual sex -- but that doesn't mean they won't have sex at all. So no, sex education does not infringe on religious rights. And making condoms available to teenagers who intend on having sex doesn't either. We're not talking about teachers throwing condoms at their students yelling "Fornicate! All of you! With each other! All the time!". We're talking about making condoms available to teenagers who ask for them and letting them know they don't have to expect any invasions of their privacy as a consequence (because doing so would discourage them from asking, thus encouraging unsafe sex). Again: kids are going to have sex. Uneducated kids are going to have more dangerous sex. Educated kids are going to have safer sex. Nobody has the right to deny the kid's independent decision whether to have sex or not. But this goes both ways: not only can't teachers tell a kid whether to have sex or not, but neither can the parents. It's ridiculous that the people who fight against abortion because it infringes upon the rights of the unborn child are often the same people who then raise moral panic about children having sex and try to deny them the right to sex education (and access to things like condoms for when they decide to have sex). Especially if you consider that access to condoms and education also has a positive effect on when those kids decide to have sex, with whom and in what kind of situations -- i.e. if you properly educate kids about sex, they may even come to the realization that they are not actually ready yet and that it's okay to say "no" to horny peers.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > Nobody has the right to deny the kid's independent decision whether to have sex or not. Unless, of course, their partner is older than they are.
  - pluma 11y ago
    Correct, but only partially so. How most of US law deals with this is ridiculous (i.e. the older partner becoming a sex offender). If two minors within a certain age range have sex, they may theoretically be "raping each other", but considering that an actual criminal offense in itself is absurd. Now, an adult having sex with a child on the other hand is obviously acting criminally. It's the adult's responsibility to act in the child's best interests due to the child's lack of ability to give consent -- even if the child (for whatever reason) engages it, it's against their best interests to follow through. As for sexually active "minors" and very young adults, especially at very narrow age ranges, that's not as trivial to answer. A hard cut-off seems the most straightforward answer but creates absurd outcomes in edge cases (e.g. someone who just turned 18 having sex with someone about to turn 18 in a country where 18 is the age of consent would be considered a rapist but not if both of them were just a tiny bit younger or older). I guess it's best to have case law deal with these situations individually. Maybe I should clarify that the reason I used the word "kids" was to make it clear we're not specifically talking about "children" in the intuitive sense. The danger that six year olds will randomly decide to have sex with each other is relatively low (if we ignore "sex play", which is a different can of worms). That's not what the article is about. We're specifically talking about "kids" (i.e. minors, which depending on where you live can include anyone between 12 and 21) who are fairly likely to be already sexually active without any external motivation/dissuasion.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      Was it really against Priscilla Presley's best interests to sleep with Elvis?
      - pluma 11y ago

thaumasiotes 11y ago

It's a famous result that the people who believe premarital sex isn't wrong account for fairly little of the premarital sex. People do things they believe are wrong all the time. I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. [...] I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life -- namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. (Attributed to C. S. Lewis here: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/801500-mere-christianity https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/801500-mere-christiani... )

genericuser 11y ago
I guess I just see a disconnect between beliefs a person actually holds, and fake beliefs a person says they hold because they are under impression those are the 'correct' beliefs to hold. I mean it comes down to a definition of the word belief which we seem to disagree on. There are probably only a handful of people in this world for which our differing definitions of belief would provide the same sets of beliefs.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > I guess I just see a disconnect between beliefs a person actually holds, and beliefs a person says they hold because they are under impression those are the 'correct' beliefs to hold. How do you know which is which? I definitely haven't said "it's your belief if you claim it aloud, no matter what you really think about it". Consider the population of wives cheating on their husbands. Do you really believe that only an insignificant number of them think what they're doing is wrong? > There are probably only a handful of people in this world for which our differing definitions of belief would provide the same sets of beliefs. First, you need to establish that we differ in our definitions.