- Joined
- Dec 22, 2003
- Messages
- 29,309
If parents could be trusted to not try to tear up the world when little Jemima inevitably breaks that trust and shows her 12 year old fanny to a lad/dog/penguin on the internet then that'd be fine.There is certainly a place to educate the child on what they should and shouldn't do and trust them to do it/not do it.
But they can't - the internet'll get more regulated, the rest of us will have our freedoms even more curtailed due to collateral "think of the children!!11" damage.
The ridiculous rules over age of consent are born of this parental panic and they are used to lock up 16 year olds shagging 15 year olds - a totally natural thing to do.
That's generally the problem with state interference in human interaction, parents demands to have the harshest possible outcomes on the other side of the party (never little Jemima and her webcam fanny show) mean that mature and reasonable responses to social trends aren't really possible.