reply to post by poet1b
Look... The age of consent was set because girls were being married and copulated with earlier than what became acceptable.
The reason why the age of consent was set at any age was because girls were being married at very young ages.
You've already shown Islam has done this for a very long time, do you think that Christendom wasn't also doing this during the time of the
crusades?
The difference was the age of enlightenment. The concept of individual freedom soaked into our collective story. So in turn, as our society evolved,
our laws became more about preserving freedoms and ending oppression. The same can not be said for the theocracies of Islam past a certain point in
history.
Look at this.. and you will see that the age of consent in the history of Western Culture is the
same as the age of marriage.
An age of consent statute first appeared in secular law in 1275 in England as part of the rape law. The statute, Westminster 1, made it a misdemeanor
to "ravish" a "maiden within age," whether with or without her consent. The phrase "within age" was interpreted by jurist Sir
Edward Coke as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was 12 years of age.
Ok, so here we see that the root of Age of Consent, is the same as Age of Marriage. They are synonymous.
Now at this time in England in 1275 the age was set at 12, much like you mentioned earlier in this thread.
Then we read that
In 1576 ... Jurist Sir Matthew Hale [of England] argued that the age of consent applied to 10- and 11-year-old girls, but most of England's North
American colonies adopted the younger age. A small group of Italian and German states that introduced an age of consent in the 16th century also
employed 12 years.
So for whatever reason England and the US went a bit lower than Italy and Germany. Perhaps because there were a bunch of perverts writing law... I
don't know, but that is the actual case.
Now when did this change? And more importantly WHY did this change? I ask why, because even though this is arguably repugnant to our own
sensibilities today, there must have been a something that happened in the WEST to change this which didn't happen in ISLAM.
Near the end of the 18th century, other European nations began to enact age of consent laws. The broad context for that change was the emergence of
an Enlightenment concept of childhood focused on development and growth.
So as we can see, we have had a much different philosophical history than Islam, and we have a very interesting turn where the development of children
became much more important in the eyes of society.
But with today's sensibilities, we would think that Children were always expected to be protected by society, however the author goes on to say..
This notion cast children as more distinct in nature from adults than previously imagined, and as particularly vulnerable to harm in the years around
puberty.
Keep in mind, that "near the end of the 18th Century" was the time Liberty became vogue for the first time, and this began to spread across the
continent. Eventually in 1833 England would even outlaw Slavery.
Still we find that...
The French Napoleonic code provided the legal context in 1791 when it established an age of consent of 11 years. The age of consent, which applied to
boys as well as girls, was increased to 13 years in 1863.
That's a huge thing to keep in mind as well, the fact that slavery was also part of the context our our culture for a long time, but eventually
liberty spread and peoples everywhere have been slowly liberated from their oppressions, whether that be marriage at a young age, or the right to
vote... but I digress...
When did this age of consent/marriage finally get to a place firmly on the other side of puberty?
Like France, many other countries, increased the age of consent to 13 in the 19th century. Nations, such as Portugal, Spain, Denmark and the Swiss
cantons, that adopted or mirrored the Napoleonic code likewise initially set the age of consent at 10-12 years and then raised it to between 13 and 16
years in the second half of the 19th century. In 1875, England raised the age to 13 years; an act of sexual intercourse with a girl younger than 13
was a felony. In the U.S., each state determined its own criminal law and age of consent ranged from 10 to 12 years of age. U.S. laws did not change
in the wake of England's shift. Nor did Anglo-American law apply to boys.
Behind the inconsistency of these different laws was the lack of an obvious age to incorporate into law. Although scientists and physicians had
established that menstruation and puberty occurred on average around age 14 in Europe at this time, different individuals experienced it at different
ages -- a fluid situation at odds with the arbitrary line drawn by whatever age was incorporated into law.
At the end of 19th century, moral reformers drew the age of consent into campaigns against prostitution. Revelations of child prostitution were
central to those campaigns, a situation that resulted, reformers argued, from men taking advantage of the innocence of girls just over the age of
consent. W. T. Stead's series of articles entitled, "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon," published in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885, was the
most sensational and influential of these exposés.
The outcry it provoked pushed British legislators to raise the age of consent to 16 years, and stirred reformers in the U.S, such as the Women's
Christian Temperance Union, the British Empire, and Europe to push for similar legislation. By 1920, Anglo-American legislators had responded by
increasing the age of consent to 16 years, and even as high as 18 years.
And there ya have it. The story of how the West's concept of what age it was acceptable to have sex or marry a girl came to evolve from it's
beginnings to now.
The key thing to keep in mind was WHY these attitudes first changed, and then how those new attitudes eventually changed even further.
I for one am glad to have gone through my childhood during the latter portion of the 20th Century when it comes to that.
[edit on 25-1-2009 by HunkaHunka]
- its not right , far from it , BUT i posted that as a balance to all the `nuke islam` style posts - Christianity and Judaism both have
similar passges in each`s holy books. 
