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RE: Child Brides In The U.S.
The distinction is nominal and insignificant. Having sex with a minor at those ages is statutory rape in the majority of states. Society also doesn't determine what is right and wrong; they can form a consensus on what it entails but they cannot change objective moral facts. Your position comes from an overly simplistic and navie outlook that takes everyone's word at face value. Psychologist have already figured out that olderman who date teens do so not out of love, but out of a need to control and exercise power over another person. It's an egotrip thing and impressionable young teens are the perfect subject.
Oh, I completely get it, chirieleison. Our nation was colonized by the Puritans instead of the French. However, here's the thing. Not too long ago, there was this one female co-worker of mine named Beatrice; and she told me and the others in my office that when her parents got married, her mother was 14 years old and her father was 26 years old. By the time she had told us this, her parents had been happily married for close to four decades. I also have another friend named Jose with whom I used to work; and when he first met me, he told me that when his parents got married, his mother was 15 years old and his father was in his thirties. From how he described his parents to me, he made it clear to me that they were happily married and had been so for several decades. People can speculate about Beatrice and Jose's parents all they want, but they cannot argue with the fact that their marriages were successful rather than disastrous despite their age differences and the age factor itself. Now I know that I may sound stubborn when I say this, but here is how I feel. There is nothing that can convince me that 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old girls whose adolescent boyfriends have impregnated them, have bailed on them, and have humiliated them before their peers are going to be so much better off in the long run than Beatrice and Jose's respective mothers are. Sadly enough, the majority of these teen moms whose same-age boyfriends have done a love-'em-and-leave-'em number on them usually end up raising a child on welfare for a very long time. I'm not saying that toxic relationships between teenage girls and adult men don't exist. They do. However, society cannot deny that there have also been successful ones like those of Beatrice and Jose's parents that have turned into happy marriages and happy families.
While I can appreciate your argument about statutory rape, the fact of reality is that "statutory rape" is only rape as determined by law rather than being actual forcible rape in which there is clearly sexual brutalization involved. In the Netherlands, the age of consent was 21 years old up until 1990. However, most adult men who had sex with their 19- or 20-year-old girlfriends did not view themselves as rapists despite that they were clearly in violation of that country's age-of-consent laws. Also, during the 1980s, it was virtually impossible for a minor under 21 years old to get legally married in that country. Once the Dutch Parliament saw that nobody was taking their nation's age-of-consent laws seriously because of the high age of consent of 21 years old, they reformed their sex laws to fit with the times accordingly.
In response to your statement about psychologists, my major concern here is that the mental-health profession has become a slippery slope regarding this topic in recent years. Therefore, I will be posting an article on Steemit regarding this subject matter in further depth. If you want me to let you know that I have posted it, I can do so in order that you may have the opportunity to read it. In any event, even though we were not able to agree on this topic, I greatly appreciate that we were able to have this online discussion in a mature and civilized fashion. I've seen people on YouTube and on other Internet platforms have discussions about this topic or about similar topics, and these people get so hateful and ugly with one another that I don't even know what they think that they are going to accomplish. Even though you were adamant at times in your replies to me, I must commend you for never becoming rude or nasty with me.