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I also have no problem with prostitution in general, but the question of legal age is an interesting one. 14 certainly seems too young to my American mind, but that's really arbitrary. The real question is, is an average 14 year old girl capable of making responsible decisions about this sort of thing on her own?
The instinctual American answer is, of course, no; but part of that is because, in this country, we don't give our kids a lot of credit when it comes to thinking for themselves. Which is paradoxical, because parents today enjoyed their share of sex, drugs, and rock & roll when they were teenagers, and it didn't kill them or destroy their lives. And when they talk about it, they're much more likely to say something along the lines of, "Those were fun times, but it was a stupid idea in hindsight"; rather than, "I was taken advantage of at a time when I couldn't make decisions for myself."
To me, the reason that so many American parents want to keep prostitution, drugs, etc., illegal, is that they don't want to be bothered with the consequences of bad parenting, and would rather have the law protect them against their own mistakes. For instance, If your 16 year old kid OD's on heroin, it wasn't because you failed to adequately warn them about the dangers of heroin. It's because the law failed to adequately protect them, and it's time for tougher drug laws. (Even less related to the discussion at hand, if your kid goes postal and shoots up a school, it's not because you're a ****ing idiot and have no idea how to raise a kid, but because we need tougher gun laws.) The fact that Law by its nature can do very little to stop this sort of activity never enters into the discussion.
But onesp1ng's last post wasn't really about the law, but rather about what the author saw as a social problem in Japan. So there's my tangent.
The instinctual American answer is, of course, no; but part of that is because, in this country, we don't give our kids a lot of credit when it comes to thinking for themselves. Which is paradoxical, because parents today enjoyed their share of sex, drugs, and rock & roll when they were teenagers, and it didn't kill them or destroy their lives. And when they talk about it, they're much more likely to say something along the lines of, "Those were fun times, but it was a stupid idea in hindsight"; rather than, "I was taken advantage of at a time when I couldn't make decisions for myself."
To me, the reason that so many American parents want to keep prostitution, drugs, etc., illegal, is that they don't want to be bothered with the consequences of bad parenting, and would rather have the law protect them against their own mistakes. For instance, If your 16 year old kid OD's on heroin, it wasn't because you failed to adequately warn them about the dangers of heroin. It's because the law failed to adequately protect them, and it's time for tougher drug laws. (Even less related to the discussion at hand, if your kid goes postal and shoots up a school, it's not because you're a ****ing idiot and have no idea how to raise a kid, but because we need tougher gun laws.) The fact that Law by its nature can do very little to stop this sort of activity never enters into the discussion.
But onesp1ng's last post wasn't really about the law, but rather about what the author saw as a social problem in Japan. So there's my tangent.
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