ARRRRRRRGHHHHHHHH... aka age of consent in Canada

So today I was glancing at the front page of one of our daily newspapers as I walked by a newspaper box and I saw this article, which makes me want to scream:

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! There are so many things wrong with this article it's hard to know where to start.

As some of you may remember, I wrote a paper about age of consent in Canada last summer for one of my classes and I've actually submitted it for publication in an academic journal (although I don't know yet if they'll accept it, though they did like my abstract). Anyway, I just wrote a letter to the editor about how biased and ridiculous the article is. But given that letters to the editor cannot be very long, I didn't even have room to mention how homophobic the whole process of raising the age of consent was given that everyone who was against raising it said that if you do raise it, you should at least abolish the separate higher age of consent (18) for anal sex. Which of course was not done, because the raising of the age of consent has nothing to do with actually protecting youth or caring about youth and everything to do with controlling/squashing/being afraid of youth sexuality. *sigh*

Anyway, so this is the letter I sent in: hopefully it'll get published.

I didn't even mention how these changes became law in FEBRUARY but only now does the paper see fit to do a big front-page article on the issue. Where were they when these changes were actually being debated?

Gods if I hear one more person tell me about the "liberal media" in this country or the US, I will scream.

 

Yeah it's weird I kinda never have really lost that identificational thingee with teenagers... I dunno. It probably helps that I'm not a parent; that would certainly be likely to change one's point of view. But when I was a teenager I thought there was so much bogus junk that went on simply because people were "not adults." And no, I haven't forgotten that.

It's kinda like even though I wasn't a student for a number of years and in fact was staff at a university I always identified more with students than with non-students.

Perhaps I'm just a late bloomer or something.

 

Actually no, it's discriminating against homosexuals and people who are single, because there's an exception to the 18yo rule if you're married and when the law was first written it was decades before marriage in Canada was legal for same-sex couples.

But even if targets "anal sex" and not "homosexuals," guess who invariably have anal sex way more than straight people? Why yes, you're correct: it's gay guys! So while semantically it doesn't say anything about gay or homosexual, that's EXACTLY what the law is all about. It may not be the letter of the law but it damn sure is the spirit.

 

No I won't kill you... it would be a little expensive to get to Australia, for starters.

You're entitled to your opinion. And while I do know that newspapers have political agendas, I'm saying they shouldn't and they definitely shouldn't to the extent that they right one-sided trash like the article in question, where it's quite cleverly written, really, to make it seem like more than one side is being presented when in fact one side is being favoured over all others.

And my favourite favourite part of this law is generally very little input was sought from the people it most affects, namely teenagers.

 

Yeah but the old law had age ranges too, and the old law based its exceptions on the nature of the relationship, not the age of the participants, which to me is a much fairer way of looking at. I mean, okay, sure, on the face of it I'm not going to immediately assume a 15yo and a 21yo should definitely be together but you know what? My mum was 16 when she met my dad who was 21 and they were married for 27 years and had two kids.

The new law would totally outlaw a 15yo and a 21yo couple whereas the old law would at least look at the relationship's nature.

And as some of the professionals in youth work have pointed out, the fact that there's a "window" is not necessarily going to be understood by youth, because people are going to say "the age of consent is 16" as opposed to "the age of consent is 16... except in certain circumstances where you're 14 or 15 and your partner is no more than 5 years older than you." Plus the old law would not have criminalised a 14yo with a 13yo, whereas the new law does, which frankly you could probably use to overturn the law on the basis of gender equality now that I think of it because I'm betting there are plenty of male older, female younger 12/14 and 12/13 and 13/14 and 14/15 etc. relationships which have just been criminalised and you could probably make a case that that effectively impacts men more than women. Well you could if in Canada youth were more than chattel, which legally they're not really. Canada has a really poor record of recognising youth as anything but the property of their parents. *sigh*

 

Well that's the thing, it's very vague and could be used by a willing judge to pretty much criminalise any relationship, which I'm sure was the point.

Let me see if I can dig up the wording...

Found it: http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/dept-min/clp/faq.html

This describes the old law. I'm gonna quote it in case they pull that page given it's now out of date:

Check the last paragraph especially.

Nope... in fact the anal sex provisions are very interestingly worded in the negative, essentially: anal sex in Canada is ALWAYS illegal EXCEPT when both parties are 18 or older or the parties are married.

Haven't you heard? There is no homosexual sex that isn't penetrative!

But yeah, technically it's only specficially anal sex that is banned. What used to be termed "buggery" in the Canadian Criminal Code.

That's an interesting point but was definitely not part of their reasoning since driving age is handled provincially whereas criminal offences are federal in Canada. Plus there's nothing to guarantee the 16 or 17 has their license or access to a vehicle.

Oh my gosh... did you read my paper? *grin*

Yes, this is all about promoting the notion of children purportedly being "innocent" and requiring "protection" to be maintained as "clean" because sex is "dirty." Plus it's completely unreflective of reality given that there are reliable stats in Canada showing that a significant proportion of teens are first having sex at 13 and 14 and sometimes younger which means this new law has just made them all criminals or has at least criminalised their partners.

(Oh look... the stats are mentioned in the Department of Justice faq I quote above!)

The really pernicious part is that it will do exactly what sexual health educators fear it will, which is give ammunition to the fundies and ultra-right wingers regarding teaching about sexual health, because people will be nervous about talking about sex with people for whom it would be illegal to be having sex--and this just made a whole swath of Canadian youth newly-minted criminals.

You can read my reply to Arneneithel to get my take on that.

 

Here's what wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America#Texas

Looks like it's 17 generally but if you're straight, there's a 14 to 17 "window."

Other sources list Texas as 17.