Okie dokie, long day is over, time to reply to g-flex.
I'm a bit tired, plus the conversation's moved on mostly, so I'll try to be brief. Also, I'm speaking from a US perspective since those are the laws I'm familiar with; dunno how age restrictions and other specifics are different elsewhere.
*crack knuckles* Children's Rights advocate mode engaged.
Neurology itself does continue developing throughout adolescence.
And well into your 20s, as was mentioned earlier. Besides, any claim about neurology will require proof of causation, not just correlation. You can't just say "well their brain's different!" and expect it to support your argument.
For some issues, it's better to be safe when it concerns child development. Yes, there might be a twelve-year-old somewhere who's somehow experience, rational, socially educated, and ethically sound enough to make the decision to have a sexual relationship with a 45-year-old and get married. However, if you assume that all of them can, then you've effectively destroyed the entire legal distinction between "minor" and "adult". I shouldn't have to explain why that's bad.
I'd absolutely love to destroy the distinction between "minor" and "adult." We're all
human beings, remember, and thus any rights inalienable to a human being or a citizen of a state also inalienable to a child. Equality, and all that.
However, I'm being idealist. Practical concerns will make destroying the distinction be impossible for quite some time. In our world as it stands now, parents need to have the ability to force children to go to school, among other things.
Yes, limiting exposure limits experience. It does not completely remove it. Children learn from others (and are taught by them, especially parents/teachers and other role models), and also from taking small steps in the direction of an endeavor which they aren't currently capable of treating responsibly. For instance, even someone who's a virgin at 30 is likely more capable of making adult decisions about sex than a thirteen-year-old would.
I'm quite the advocate of sexual education. Everything you said is right, of course, but is in my opinion easily mitigated.
Part of experience is simply having experience with yourself. When it comes to sexuality, that's something that (in most ways) is pretty new to you at puberty, and something you deal with constantly in the ongoing years. Social and economic situations are another form of experience, which is why I made the statement about social maturity. People these days become socially and financially secure and independent at a later age than they used to, and that environment/situation shapes our experiences. It obviously isn't always correlated with age perfectly, but there is an obvious correlation, and stage of life itself and your socioeconomic circumstances matter a lot.
So you're saying children have less responsibility nowadays and thus are less likely to make responsible decisions? I can get behind that, actually. We as a society are overprotective, I think.
However, we're again using rhetoric like "less likely". I've already conceded the need to set arbitrary age limits on things due to practical reasons, but if my stance on this and other stereotypes hasn't made it abundantly clear, that sort of reasoning carries very little weight to me. "Because most of <insert group of people here> are like that" is something I'll almost immediately reject, no matter what you're talking about. This is perhaps the best argument you've made, and may even of shifted my opinion a bit, but not gonna convince me much beyond that.
You don't think that children are less developed than adults in more abstract or less testable ways than academic knowledge? Driving is different, as you can test someone fairly objectively on whether or not they can perform it, which is why we test for licenses, but there's also an element of mature handling of the privilege, which is why there's an age limit as well.
Well, those abstract reasons are what I was asking you. If it were academic knowledge, it'd be just as easy as testing for driving.
Regarding driving specifically, any argument about "maturity" will just make me laugh. If "maturity" is something you considered required for being able to drive, a very, very large chunk of the population should have their licenses taken away. People are often at their worst on the road; that's why "road rage" is such a common thing. Any correlation to age here is very weak at best (and again nothing more than correlation).
You know as well as I do that 16 year olds in the US are some of the worst drivers on the road. Bump the required age for driving to 25, and then we'll see 25 year olds driving just as bad. Experience is the deciding factor in driving ability by a ridiculously huge margin. If we lower or remove the age limit (and instead test entirely on competence), I sincerely doubt we'll see a boost to traffic accidents. Hell; if we want to reduce traffic accidents, the very very first thing I think we should do is make the driving exams a hell of a lot stricter. I, for example, should not have a license, yet I do. Why? Because everyone in the US is expected to have one; they pretty much hand them out like candy provided you drive in the right lane.
Driving is another thing I could rant about
Children voting? Where do you draw the line? Should people be able to vote the instant they learn to recognize a name on a ballot?
The line should be drawn based on something logical, not arbitrary like age. However, people like the arbitrary age limit because any
practical and reasonable limitation could also be applied to adults. Knowledge of the issues, literacy, ability to recognize a name on the ballot; all these things can potentially affect adults. So, we don't limit voting based on that.
What does this tell you? It tells me that age is the deciding factor, not anything that actually matters. This is beyond prejudice; this is claiming inherent inferiority. Something
intrinsic about children makes them ineligible to vote, and that something cannot also exist in an adult.
I would further respond to this, but sometimes I come across an idea so ridiculous I'm not even sure what to say about it, as I'm completely unprepared for it. Then again, you're someone who apparently thinks it should be legal for grandpas to seduce little kids, so I'm not sure we're operating from positions that are remotely compatible to begin with.
Here's why it's so alien to you: We're all taught from a young age that kids are stupid and adults know best. We're quite literally taught that children are
inferior, all for the purpose of easing subjugation.
There are two reasons why it's so pervasive and unquestioned:
One, children themselves buy into it. It's a weird phenomenon, and exists throughout history with almost any demographic that's oppressed (especially the lower the magnitude of oppression). The cult of domesticity, for example, was perpetrated largely by women. Some slaves accepted inferiority too (though to a much smaller degree, due to much harsher oppression). People accept their own inferiority with frightening ease, especially if they're only "minorly" oppressed.
Two, the time limit. Kids are inferior
now, but they'll be able to move on to full fledged human beings. It just takes time! This very much eases people into accepting it.
Ultimately my point is this: Children, of any age, are just as much human beings as you or I. Thus, they should be afforded every right you and I have, so long as there's no rational reason for them not to. This, furthermore, allows for parenting and such to still exist; it's just that parents or the state restricting a child's right should have actual reason to, not just "because I said so and you have no recourse to fight back." Finally, practically speaking, none of what I'm advocating will happen anytime soon due to logistical reasons (and there are plenty of those!).
I hope I've adequately expressed my opinion.