I am looking for good refutations for those, like my brother, who look at statutory rape laws as an undeniable justification for government. I am a neophyte at debate, so when he brought up this point, I had no immediate answer. So here I am, looking for some.

Here's a quote from a page that sums up my frustration:



http://lonelylibertarian.blogspot.com/2008/04/age-of-consent.html

This is just another version of the classic "But what about the children!!" argument. In other words, legitimize all kinds of tyranny by justifying one specific case where regulation might be beneficial. The first reply to this ridiculous defense of government should be (in my opinion):
"Okay, let's abolish all laws except for the age of consent (because they are tyrannical) and then we'll talk about the age of consent."
This should reveal that the person you are arguing with doesn't really care about the age of consent, they just want to establish a precedent on which they can build their whole statist machine of exploitation. Point that out to them. And a good follow up would be:
"Who are you to tell people when they can or cannot have sex? What are you - the sex police?"
You just have to get these losers on the defensive. It is they who have to be able to justify their legitimate power to rule over you, not you who has to justify why you should not be ruled by them. The person will probably reply that the age of consent should be set no by him/her, but by "society" (whatever that means). Because of course we must protect the children!
The fact is that children can easily be protected by normal voluntary community rules. Anarchists and voluntaryists are not against rules established by contract, only against rules imposed on them by a violent monopoly of force and coercion (government). So the final reply to the age of consent question should simply be that different communities will have different ways of dealing with the problem of pedophilia. In some places there might be a set age limit, in other places instances might be judged on a case-by-case basis, much as it is now.

The statement "without a government enforced age of consent law there will be no way to prevent creepy old men from raping little girls" is essentially identical to the statement "without a government enforced law against burglaries there will be no way to prevent teenage thugs from robbing poor old ladies". The difference is that the first question seems a lot more serious, whereas it is actually based on an identical assumption: that without laws there is complete disorder and violence becomes rampant because there is no way of stopping it.

As Proudhon wrote "Liberty is the mother, not the daughter of order". And this is also our motto. Government violence does not produce order, only an illusion of order.

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"Here, every citizen is king; for he has plenitude of power, he reigns and governs." - P.J. Proudhon

I appreciate your thoughtful reply. Could you elaborate on the above with more details on these hypothetical rules and how they would come to be?

In order to assume that a voluntaryist system could "work" it is necessary to assume that rules can be arrived at voluntarily, that is that contracts can be made between individuals. This is a huge topic, of course, which is elaborated upon by numerous theorists like Murray Rothbard. If you want I can give you some pointers on where to find discussion about how libertarian contractual society would be organized in the absence of coercive law, although any explanations and proposals made up to this point are certainly not final or exclusive.

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"Here, every citizen is king; for he has plenitude of power, he reigns and governs." - P.J. Proudhon

This argument is classic because it mirrors a legitimate worry of parents everywhere. Our children are born with no defense against any larger predator. Parents must worry that law, no matter how ill-conceived, acts as an aid against other people who may act as predators against their children. So my inquiry into this topic is not so much to turn around a debater using this subject as an argument for government, but to reassure worrying parents that a stateless society does not mean a truly riskier society in which parents must raise their children.

Just to clarify: parents see the rearing of their children as their PRIMARY responsibility in life. Even with the easily demonstrable advantages of a stateless society, and the huge increases in life's possibilities that such a society would unleash, I think most parents would REJECT such a society, and continue to wear their chains, if they thought that removing their chains would also result in the removal of chains on people who would bring more risk to their children.

Here's a snippet of commentary from a socially liberal source, HuffPost. I'm sure that any commentary from the conservative view would be advocacy of even more repression.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/embracing-teenage-sexuali_b_409136.html



We anarchists don't believe in any justification for legal regulation. However, if we are to win hearts and minds, we must be able to easily demonstrate that a stateless society will not end up as being a substantially more risky society in which to raise their children.

It is not only their own chains - it is the chains they want to put on all others, to 'support and protect their children', which causes the greatest problems. Given that, to the parent, nothing matters more than the 'welfare of the child' the rights of everyone can be damned if they 'get in the way'. Of course, a tiny percentage will consider the type of world their children will inhabit - but most will only think of the more 'practical' question - the degree to which their children can be both advantaged and protected by 'the system' which exists now, and they predict will exist in the future.

This is how gene-survival works - why nepotism exists, and why it quickly corrodes to dust any system which is designed to be a 'meritocracy', whether of 'right' or 'left' design. That said, who would want to live in a world where parents did not love their children? This conundrum is one of the most compelling reasons why we cannot ever have liberty in a system in which some have 'power over others' - hence, 'no leaders' - anarchism.

OK, so we have to design a world where human rights are preserved to spite these inclinations. We can start my reducing the intensity of these 'symptoms of parental concern', by getting rid of the monopoly system which brings us FEAR through artificial-scarcity - a scheme to achieve the optimum supply-demand price-point. I don't mean getting rid of markets - only the status-quo systems formed by the monopolization of natural scarcities of land and resources. Such advances will also reduce the frequency and intensity of child-abuse, as parents will be less concerned with turning their children into 'successful' robots - in order that their chance of survival is thereby improved.

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--- See a fuller explanation of my research and proposals here ---

Consider, too, that without a formal state, vigilantes are liberated. One person may feel more free to rape, but everyone else who discovers the rapist is also more free to play judge, jury, and executioner. Remember, laws that protect criminal behavior are also gone. So be wary of the stranger passing through, but strangers be wary of the residents. Vigilantes and mobs can be scary too.

With or without a formal state, there will always arise codes of behavior and consequences from the rest of the community on individuals for breaking codes. So I just see government as the formalization of those codes and anarchy as the informal version.

In regards to the original post and pedophilia..

I'm no expert on the subject, nor have I read a whole lot into all the 'age of consent' jargon as it is mostly arbitrary and is generally a reflection of social and cultural norms which vary drastically throughout the world.

If someone is seriously arguing that without "age of consent" laws, there would be more pedophiles, I think they should probably take a more biological view of the issue at hand - this is simply not a natural state of any animal that I know of to have a desire to engage a prepubescent of the opposite sex (or same for that matter). I would also guess that homo sapiens are the only creatures in which this condition exists at least to any substantial degree which simply would boil down to abuse suffered in childhood, which is a whole separate issue all-together. Maybe someone who has a better foundation or at least has read more into animal behaviour than I have can summarize this better, but it just simply does not seem to me to be a natural state of being.

In regards to 'age of consent", there is no way I would think to logically or formally prove that it is a moral issue.. It just depends what social and cultural norms precipitate.. at the same time this doesn't offer an explanation as to why some people and not others choose to pursue those younger than what is deemed socially acceptable amongst a group of people.. I suppose this could be traced back to upbringing environment as well but I'm not really sure.

This topic is old and I doubt I answered anyone's original questions but I wanted to share my 2-cents I was pondering this topic when I saw it brought up in a youtube comment and reminded me of this thread.

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Liberty: "the conceptual extension of the idea, that your rational mind grants you the exclusive right to your body & products of your labour."

+1

Before someone can establish a morality of age of consent, then it needs to somehow be logical. I can see zero objective difference between a woman who is 18 years and 1 second and a woman who is 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds old. Until an objective definition can be defined as the difference, then I will not accept the line.

There is an objective difference between pre-pubescent and post-pubescent (though the process of puberty could be a gray area) and thus, this biological fact of reaching sexual maturity is a logical guide to follow.

However, we should very much emphasize the amount of childhood trauma that humans go through and how this results in a perpetuation of the cycle into childhood sexual abuse. We should emphasize far more on peaceful parenting and sexual crime, pedophilia, promiscuity, drug addiction, criminality, depression, psychiatric medication, schizophrenia, obesity, and many other problems all but vanish. (look up adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study). As this change in people to peaceful parenting is necessary for people to cease to desire government as a form of abusing and ruling over a population, then as a by-product as "reasons" for government to exist become less and less, government will also be less desired until it becomes irrelevant as the problems do not exist, as the same things that lead to societies overt problems also lead to the more covert problem of the state.

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I support anarchism because I want to communicate rather than use the force of the state to attempt to solve complex problems. I hope you would show me the same courtesy. If not, I do not wish to be around someone who prefers guns to communication...