DEFINING "CHILD": Trying To Have It Both Ways

I particularly liked this statement which appeared as a comment to an online review of the movie "Doubt".

"It is always dangerous to combine “children” with “underage” as those are two different categories. One is a metaphysical reality and the other is a legal line drawn by politicians. And today, by defining teens as “children” the State has begun waging a war on teens who are now incarcerated as ’sex offenders’ for a romp in the back of the Chevy. Surely this is Big Government run amok and it doesn’t help when social conservatives push this exaggerated hysteria which is then used to prop up massive intrusions into family life.

These laws are removing parental power over their children and destroying family life. Because conservatives (and even some libertarians) promote this fear they are helping erect an edifice with immense powers over families.

While so-called liberals are defined as “anti-family” surely the Big Government intrusion into family life is even more anti-family. And need I point out that if the plot were different, but with the same characters, this review would be very different.

If the teenage boy in the film had committed a violent crime, and the family was claiming he was just a “mere child” the reviewer, I suspect would be shreiking that the teen be tried as an adult since “he knows better”. When it comes to sexual issues conservatives want teens seen as small childlren, when it comes to crime they want them seen as adult threats. Pick one side and stick to it."