..and it is set based more on hope than on hard evidence. I've known a few--and I stress few--sixteen-year-olds mature enough to be trusted to handle their own affairs. And I've met quite a few more thirty-year-olds who, IM-not-so-HO, shouldn't have been trusted alone in the house for five minutes, let alone with decisions that affect the fates of others. But, there comes a point where, for simple sake of clarity, the law has to draw a line and say "this is the age at which a person is expected to be responsible and accountable for his or her actions." Whether that age is sixteen, or eighteen, or fourteen, or twenty-one, seems pretty much to be a matter of cultural bias.
So long as we're considering inconsistencies in the age of consent and related age limits, here's one that's always puzzled me: in the U.S., it is now fairly uniformly enacted that a person must be twenty-one years of age to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages. Yet, males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five must register with the selective service system (the "draft"). First, if a person is old enough to be called upon to fight for his country, is he not old enough to have a drink on the way? Second, is that factor somehow chromosomally-linked?
Here's my view: any person who can present a selective service registration card or a military ID should also be entitled to drink, to vote, to have sex with others registered for military service, and to enjoy all the priveleges, uphold all the responsibilities, and be accountable to all the restrictions of adulthood. Then, we would have only one question to answer: how young do we want our children to be before we ask them to die on our behalfs? |
