Derp!!!

[blueduck37.livejournal.com]

I am LOVING this scandal because of how it's exposing how many on the right view women.

Comments

[yelena-r0ssini.livejournal.com]

I'm not slippery-sloping. I am granting that there is a clear, albeit arbitrary, line of demarcation. The state has arbitrarily drawn that line at 18 here in the U.S. There are probably many people under 18 who are mentally capable of voting and owning property and so forth, and probably many people over 18 who are not thus, but 18 is where that line has been drawn here. What I'm asking you is where YOUR optimal arbitrary line would be, and how far you think a religious exemption ought to be able to drag it down.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm not slippery-sloping. I am granting that there is a clear, albeit arbitrary, line of demarcation.

No, you're not. You're saying "well, if 13 is okay, why not 12/11/10/5? That's a slippery slope.

[yelena-r0ssini.livejournal.com]

If my phrasing suggested that, I apologize, that's not what I meant to get at. What I was asking was, if you feel that religious beliefs on when one is an adult should override a state limit, did you feel that there was some age down to which religion could "bargain" adulthood?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I think there's definitely an argument that our idea of what adulthood is may be wrong, especially given religious and cultural mores. I don't think that argument could ever be made for a 5 year old.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

Sorry to jump in; I'm curious about this too. So, just speaking of actual capability, clearly five-year-olds can't go to work (or would have awfully limited options, at least), though the argument could be made that 13-year-olds might be able to. There is an age, in other words, at which someone is too young for the labor market—simply, actually incapable—no matter what some kooky religion says about old souls or adulthood rituals or whatever. Five years old is definitely in this "cannot happen" area. I agree with you that thirteen is probably in the "arguably employable" area. Somewhere between those, of course, is a "cutoff" age at which a person passes from one category to another.

How we'd figure out precisely what that age is, I don't know. It doesn't really matter where the cutoff is, just that there is one, and that by virtue of there being such a thing as being too young to work, there must be one. So say we do figure out that precise age, and write a law dictating that no one X years or younger may work, but religious leaders in the Hypothetical Church insist that the church's line of adulthood is one year earlier, and that their religion dictates that they must have one X-year-old at every business venture run by a member of the congregation or the church itself. (For good luck, I don't know, the reason doesn't matter.) They desire the freedom to practice something they consider perfectly reasonable—and more importantly, mandatory—but it has been precisely determined that children of X years are literally incapable of working, and a law has been made to prevent such a thing from being attempted. What should happen?