October 10, 2008 | In: Chastity, Education, Law & Authority, Reasoning, Society, Truth
UK’s Slide Down the Sexual Slippery Slope
LifeSiteNews carried the following story yesterday:
UK’s Largest Teachers’ Union Lobbies to Legalise Sex with Students
The story explains that the union sees an unfair discrimination in the law. The legal age of consent in the UK is 16. However, a teacher who has consensual sex with a student who is over the age of 16 is still charged for statutory rape. As a union representative pointed out, if that same teacher had consensual sex with a student from a different school, it would be legal.
Voices opposing the union warn of a slippery slope:
Gregory Carlin, however, a child protection activist and head of the Irish Anti-Trafficking Coalition, said that such ideas were another sign of the erosion of legal protections for young people against exploitation.
“If the NASUWT philosophy has its day,” he said, “exploiting a 16 year old in a brothel would carry no extra penalty.” Under the same logic, he said, “Jail guards would be able to take their pick from their charges and foster parents would be spared prosecution for having sex with foster children.”
People who warn of slippery slopes are often dismissed as alarmists. The slippery slope argument is really just a form of the “logical consequences” argument. While it is true that this sort of argument can be abused (such as the assertion that laws defining traditional marriage will logically lead to keeping post-menopausal women or couples with diagnosed fertility problems from getting married), they can be valid arguments if they are based on a real causal connection.
In this case, the valid connection is the purpose of the law. The prohibition of sex between teachers and students is designed to keep a teacher from using his or her authority (explicitly or implicitly) to influence a student into bed. The teacher’s union can argue that the law is not necessary due to entrenched professional expectations. It would be enough for the teacher to be fired – he or she does not also have to become a registered criminal. However, the law is in place not only for the teachers, but also for people in other positions of power. To change the law for one would change the law for all. This is a firm logical argument.
Taking one small step away from firm logical argument toward alarmism, one can look at the UK’s loosening of moral norms and see where it is all heading. The age of consent in the UK used to be 18. They lowered it to 16 but successfully resisted attempts to have it lowered t 14. Europe in general now sees saving sex for marriage as an antiquated and irrelevant value. Now attempts are being made to erase the legal penalty for a sex within a relationship of power. It may not be too large a step for the professional expectation to soon erode too. After all, it’s just sex, right? This line of argument does not have the backing of firm logic. It is a bit alarmist. However, it isn’t necessarily wrong. It is based on knowledge of our fallen human nature, and on observations of other ways our culture has grown accustomed to calling evil good (who would ever have thought in 1950 that we would accept killing unborn babies as a form of birth control?).
We must use slippery slope arguments with great care. They are perceived as alarmist and extremist. However, if they are carefully formulated they can be a powerful reasoning tool. Hopefully the UK will take note of such reasoning before they slip even further down the slippery slope of free sex.
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