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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Consent is not puberty

What's problematic about this pair of statements?

CNN's headline was: "Evangelist: 'Puberty' is age of sexual consent"
In an interview on Saturday, [Tony Alamo] had said that for girls having sex, "consent is puberty."

CNN assumes that he means reaching puberty enables girls to make sexual consent decisions. If you look at what that statement actually says - "consent is puberty - then he's implying that the age of puberty is the same thing as consent. Maybe the context of the statement clarifies what Alamo means, but as it stands, the literal meaning of that sentence is that anyone at the age of puberty gives sexual consent. Not that they have the ability to, but that they automatically do.

For someone accused of child abuse and pornography, the semantics make a huge difference.
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