"Look, by modern standards, Joseph himself would have been classified a pedophile, since he married a child when he was a grown man, but we all know he couldn't really be a pedophile, because he was Joseph and Joseph was a good guy, even by our modern standards."
Well, no, not a pedophile, but perhaps a statutory rapist.
What a great reason for the bible not condemning pedophilia. Of course, the commandments don't prohibit concubines or rape either. You're just not allowed to have sex with another man's wife; it says nothing about married men raping other unmarried women. (Er, excuse me, by raping, I really meant "pursuing other consensual sexual relations with their human female property or randomly selected virgin women from other tribes.")
The age of consent being raised is a relatively recent phenomenon, and not quite universal across the globe.
For whatever reasons, the base Western (arbitrary) decision is that the age of consent should be 14/16/18 -- pick a year, or a state, the number will change in the US. (I'll let other nationals discuss what has transpired in their nations within the last century, a few years back a Canadian friend stunned me with "it's fourteen in Canada" which I am not sure of as of this writing).
Where to set this age of consent is a reflection of a societal change. Referring to somebody who marries a fifteen year old as a pedophile is damned foolishness, and very narrow minded.
Let me offer you an example.
I work with a lady in her early 60's. She is originally from outside of San Antonio. She was married at the age of fifteen. She had to get permission of her parents to marry at that age, but having gotten it, the marriage was legal. The marriage lasted over 30 years, and produced one child. She and her husband adopted another. The marriage broke up years later over, you guessed it, infidelity.
Her ex passed away recently from cancer. She grieved, even though they had parted with much rancor.
What I read in your post puts appears to set him up as a pedophile.
This makes no sense.
A different example, where a charge of statutory rape might have been competently made, but not pedophilia.
My sister's youngest daughter liked to screw as a teenager. At one point, she did some screwing with a man who was twenty, or twenty-one) . She became pregnant. When she had the baby, my brother in law and I did some back of the napkin arithmetic, and realized that she had conceived under the age of 16. This was no big surprise, as she'd been sexually active for quite some time before that. (But with boys in school) .
Technically, someone could have brought charges against that young man/sperm donator/numbskull, but the family was not interested. IMO it helped that, unasked for, he and his parents ponied up child support and have, to their credit, kept it coming ever since. (More his parents than him, as he doesn't earn much money). It is my opinion, knowing the two personalities involved, that she was probably the sexual innovator between the two, not that it matters in a strict reading of the law.
What would have been the benefit to society for him to go to jail, I wonder, other than for the satisfaction of a few of us who wanted to cave in his head with a shovel? Dumbarse, never heard about wrapping the rascal.
As it works out now, he's still out, still paying some of the child support from his modest job, and the taxpayer isn't paying for his room and board. Imperfect, but it worked well enough. My sister in law adopted the little girl and raised her until her daughter got old enough to do so. (Passed the torch last year). More to the point,
her and my wife's oldest sister offered to adopt the baby before it was born, knowing all the sordid details behind the whole story. Her opinion: not the baby's fault for being born. Her husband was fully on board with that course of action, though it was an option not pursued.
Pedophile? No. By strict rule a perp in a statutory rape? Yes. But I understand why charges were not pressed. (BTW, in our county, there are oodles of underage preganancies. Something in the water, I suppose, my daughter in eighth grade had three class mates who were pregnant, one for the second time).
I'd like to see less use of "pedophile" in discussions regarding underage sex, since the
age in underage has a sliding scale.
As to the law, I can't find the ref that is reliable, but SC Justice Ginsburg had attributed to her a remark that the age of consent could be set at 12. Biologically, it's a tenable position ... but as with age of consent in a lot of ways, an arbitrary social rule/reason is adopted that a given society can live with. As a father of a teenaged girl, I held it to be my wife's and my responsibility to teach our daughter well. We did what we could, but what it boils down to is our daughter simply exercised good judgment.
Aside: The allusion bugs me, as Ginsburg is no idiot, so I looked a bit. An old Slate article points out that it was taken more than a bit out of context, and Lindsey Graham was being less than honest in his political attack.
In the course of making this point, Ginsburg's 1974 paper praises and then quotes a draft Senate bill that never became law. The proposed law has, she writes, "a definition of rape that, in substance, conforms to the equality principle." She then quotes the bill's language:
"A person is guilty of an offense if he engages in a sexual act with another person, not his spouse, and: (1) compels the other person to participate: (A) by force; or (B) by threatening or placing the other person in fear that any person will imminently be subjected to death, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping; (2) has substantially impaired the other person's power to appraise or control the conduct by administering or employing a drug or intoxicant without the knowledge or against the will of such other person, or by other means; or (3) the other person is, in fact, less than twelve years old."
Yes, the language Ginsburg quotes with approval puts the age of consent at 12, which does seem awfully young. But she isn't addressing herself to the age issue; she's addressing herself to the gender issue. Is her praise meant to constitute an endorsement of the entire bill? Of course not. Ginsburg makes this explicit in a footnote in which she complains that even this language "retains use of the masculine pronoun to cover individuals of both sexes," which at the very least is confusing if it's intended to outlaw statutory (and other) rape by women, too.
http://www.slate.com/id/2126491/
DR
), you're good!