Essays

In this age of victims and precaution where satire may be misread and parody taken literally, it is advisable to label humour with a big WARNING sign. I would also post a further WARNING, I am poor and have no insurance so don’t bother suing.

Society is so concerned about kids being exposed to sex that it neglects the question of how they should learn about sex. Sex should be acknowledged in appropriate ways from infancy including the parents’ affection for them and each other both of which may be passionate, and that the genitals have different feelings.

There should be a specific age when young people take on much of the rights and responsibilities of adults. At the age of responsibility children would be criminally responsible for their acts, able to decide which parent they want to live with in case of separation, or to actively participate in making alternative arrangements, able to give consent to medical and other treatment, able to refuse to take corporal punishment from parents and schools, able to enter contracts regarding personal property, and able to give consent to sexual activity.

Canada is in the midst of a hysteria about child pornography, the government and the Supreme Court believe that a mere glimpse of a teenage breast or penis creates a significant risk that the person will rape a child. In the Western tradition we have to back to the early days of the Roman Inquisition to find a parallel situation.