Do conservatives lack the ability to remember the past or are they willfully ignorant

[mrcheerful]

of even recent history in their life time? I am having a debate about laws vs moral laws. The conservative seems to think that laws against adults getting with kids is a moral law thats been around since 1776. If memory serves me right didn't laws against sex with children come out in the 1990's? I know in some southren states girls as young as 12 were allowed to marry anyone reguardless of their age. Plus the fact the law was not a moral law but based on the grounds of harm to the young person. Anyhow the debate was about the nit wit that wants to say birth control is a form of abortion and the conservative is trying to bring up that we already have moral laws on the books so its ok for moral laws to be made. LOL got to love these deep debates at times.

[sutz12]

1. Yes. nt

[YOY]

2. (Rimshot)

That and it's so much easier to keep f***ing up instead of rethinking your actions and possibly admitting you were wrong.

[Warpy]

3. Laws based on moral opinion held by one religion

but not necessarily another should be off the books.

All religions agree on theft and murder and variations along that line, so those laws are safe.

However, the nanny state laws that try to outlaw sin are doomed to failure and only make sin more attractive than it already is, creating black markets and criminal gangs and all sorts of problems we wouldn't have if the religious would just realize the only morality they can ever control is their own.

[Clark2008]

4. We haven't been able to marry that young in these "southren"

states in decades.

For the record, the US has no federal law against child marriage, but ALL states have restricted marriage to at least 16 or above (16-18 with parental consent). Anyone younger than 16 must petition the court. This is true in nearly ALL states, "southren" or not.

(Sorry, the South-bashing has to be corrected in even its most subtle forms or it festers - your main topic was actually quite interesting, but let's not blame all things odd on us Southerners. OK?)

[mrcheerful]

9. No offense ment to southreners my friend................

I had an aunt that married a 67 yo when she was 13, she was from Alabama. She was my uncles second wife btw, they married in 1960 after her hubby passed on leaving her with 3 younguns at the ripe old age of 25. I also know that in the late 1970's some southren states still had parental consent laws with girls under 16, a friend of mine who was 21 in 79 and had a shot gun wedding with a 14 yo in a southren state, I think it was Ark. But my memory isn't what it used to be. I know the south has progressed since then and wasn't south bashing in any way.

[liberal N proud]

5. Willfully lack the ability to remember

Ignorance is bliss

[YOY]

6. Dunno 'bout that.

Ever met a happy skinhead neonazi?

[ccharles000]

7. they are just evil

[OwnedByFerrets]

8. Willingly or unwillingly, they are still ignorant.....nuff said.

[Selatius]

10. In the early 1900s, it was probably OK for marriages for kids as young as 14 or even 13.

Child marriages were only recently outlawed relatively speaking, and I doubt there were laws against child marriage back in 1776. They were more concerned about other things then, such as invasion by foreign European powers and developing domestic industry instead of relying on European powers for manufactured goods.

Anyone ever read Romeo and Juliet? They were both teenagers.

[hfojvt]

12. kinda common for girls to marry at 16, 17 or 18 even 15

but not much younger that I have seen, going back to the 1600s in America. And generally not for young men. Most young men didn't have the means to start their own families until they were in their mid twenties. Sometimes 15 year old males would leave home and work as farmhands, but not that often in my research. More often even the married young man is still living on the home farm with either his or her parents.

[Selatius]

13. Most girls were taken by much older grooms, usually in their late 20s or even older.

At least, that was the way things went for a long time.

Juliet was supposed to be married off in the play, and Shakespeare, for whatever reasons, made her 13 years old.

[hfojvt]

15. not most, although it was fairly common

I think the 8 children of Joseph Loomis (born 1590) were more representative. The ages of (groom, bride) - (31, 25), (27, 23), (24, 21) , (48, 18) but for her 2nd marriage (21, 31), (27, 27), (29, unknown) and for his 2nd marriage (39, 18), (27, 15) (25, 18). Only 3 out of ten marriages there have huge age gaps and in only one of ten is the bride under 17. That sort of pattern seems more typical, a bride from 18-24 and a groom 1-8 years older. In my research on Catholics in Germany the bride is almost always over age 20, at least before 1805. I cannot say what was going on in England, nor anywhere else pre 1600s.

[hfojvt]

11. I cannot find information on the history

but I am quite sure it goes back way before 1990. This book says

http://books.google.com/books?id=-u6OgdOpN9AC&pg=PA548&...

"beginning in the 1880s the Women's Christian Temperance Union began a massive drive to protect adolescent girls from sex, launching a nationwide effort to raise the age of consent (which was as low as 10 in some states)."

[BlooInBloo]

14. Ahistoricism is central to being conservative....

If they acknowledged things changing in the past, they wouldn't be able to argue for the status quo *now*.

[treestar]

16. They have a simple minded view of the world

They may have an inkling that it is more complex than that, but they can't handle that, so repeatedly insist that it is simpler than it is, as a way of comforting themselves that they are in complete control.

1776 indicates he wants to believe the good old U.S. of A. stopped that scourge of child sex!

Moral laws are just moral laws, if some of them coincide with the laws that are passed, that doesn't mean they are all passable and Constitutional.

Equating birth control with abortion simply abuses the English language. When they equate abortion with murder they are doing the same thing. The reason there is a separate term for abortion is that it is a different thing. It was against the law at one time, too. Now it's not. Murder still is. Murder is a different thing.

Conservatives believe they can make things the way they want by redefining words.

They also do this with the word "socialist." You can give them dictionary definitions of the world, but they still insist on changing the meaning of the word so that it includes liberal Democrats in the U.S.