The Law is an Ass

The law is an ass because instead of practically applying human conscience, it overrides it. We become disillusioned with our power in society when the laws no longer service reality as we know it, just the prejudices of our great grandfathers. Anything that exists in the law "just because," and not due to any hard fact of nature, particularly when defining status offenses for minors, is typically a service to fantasy over nature.

The law of the king is a decree based upon prejudice. The natural law is one based upon observation. Children grow up in a universe governed by natural laws that drive their development irrespective of jurisdiction, but they are living in an adult society governed by artificial decree and cultural hocus pocus (age-based laws) that limit their expressive potential.

While natural laws by their nature allow children to grow and expand as they mature along the innumerable trajectories that human life finds for itself, the law of the king only confines, restricts, limits, and all but cages them to an artificial magic set of inconsequential circumstances. While natural laws may or may not lead a child to experience the full freedom of their faculties as they develop, the law of the king is unique in that all it does is impose on them for stepping outside its predetermined lines, sometimes harshly.

The law renders minors as brainless objects, differentiated from material possessions only in semantics. For possessions, there are rightful owners. For minors, there are rightful parents or guardians. For possessions, there is conveyance. For minors, there is adoption. For possessions, there is bailment or constructive possession. For minors, there is compulsory schooling and state seizure. For possessions, there is acquired possession without consent. For minors, there is birth.  For possessions, there is a deed or a title. For minors, there is a birth certificate. For possessions, there is a state of being stolen. For minors, there is a state of being kidnapped. For possessions, there is a state of being mislaid or lost. For minors, there is neglect. For possessions, there is a state of being damaged. For minors, there is a state of being abused or mistreated.

There are numerous parallels, but the point is that the law informs itself about what is in a child's best interests based on the same principles one could also ascribe to material possessions. Just like one can ask, "what is in this child's best interests?", one could also ask, "what is in this desk lamp's best interests?" and arrive at the same conclusion for each, differing in semantics only. Fortunately for human dignity, many disagree that children are the same as material possessions. Many would argue that children are actually human beings, with rights of their own-- and that the "m-word" (minor) is make believe.

Spoiled Into Submission

Sometimes you can beat a child into a fury and spoil a child into submission, injure them with kindness and strengthen them with sternness, build resilience by letting them subsist and entitlement by giving them everything they want. Sometimes carefully structuring a child's environment to work exactly to their developmental mindset only weakens their ability to grow beyond it. The point to any interaction between an adult and a child is not to gratify the child's strengths, but to challenge them.

This is hardly revolutionary--Lev Vygotsky wrote on the Zone of Proximal Development and defined it thus:

"...The distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygostsky, Mind in Society 86).

Because we can not count on the "line in the sand" age-limit legal definitions, which automatically render all children regardless of maturity or skill incapable and therefore useless, we (you, me, and society at large--parents, teachers, coaches, adult friends, children themselves) have to be that "more capable peer" who dares challenge a child. We all have to take personal responsibility to ensure that children and youth in general are actually prepared for life at the ages the law arbitrarily sets for those milestones.

The line in the sand age limits imposed on minors, if they are never going away, are NOT the time to begin teaching children how to live, they are benchmarks for all progress up to that point--not the first opportunity to teach a youth a thing or two, but the last. The mythology or "magic" that the law bases its reasoning on as to how children develop into adults (based on their date of manufacture alone) certainly isn't going to do it for us.

If we do expect the law to determine how and when we decide to teach children about how to live in the world--that is, if we wait until their 18th birthday before we decide to stop spoiling them with ignorance and politically correct entitlements--how can we expect them to actually be able to do what is their right to do, and have responsibility for the things they are then responsible for? If we give them no adversarial situations, how do we expect them to handle conflict constructively? Childhood is supposed to be a living, challenging time of life, not a paradise, and the more adults try to make it a paradise, the less livable it becomes.

The law can not raise kids for us, it is too busy harming those who didn't develop properly.

Harmful to Children

In her celebrated book Harmful to Minors, Levine (2002) concluded with this profound but rarely expressed insight:

Sex is not harmful to children. It is a vehicle to self-knowledge, love, healing, creativity, adventure, and intense feelings of aliveness. . . . Our moral obligation to the next generation is to make a world in which every child can partake safely, a world in which the needs and desires of every child . . . can be marvelously fulfilled (p. 225).

One can not raise a fulfilled child when a chunk of their humanity is ruthlessly denied them, when their dignity is unrecognized by the depraved and the dried up. One can not call a starving child full. One can not call a child whose asexuality has been forced on them, fulfilled.

Child is the Nigger of the World

"Think about it, do something about it.."

Whenever you look at age based laws, you have to start going back to 18th and 19th century social customs to find even a trace of justification for them. We haven't the originality to break free of them yet, despite 200 years of progress in all other realms of the social practice. The young ones today are left behind, unwilling participants in the social prejudices of their great grandfathers. Just as well, this isn't something unique to modern, western culture, but is true of nearly all people at all time throughout history. Child is the slave of the slave, the impish servant of the servant, and unless bestowed to the inhuman heights of God-head or King, has never been regarded by civilized society for being, simply, the human beings they are.

A minor is a citizen below the age of majority (whatever the country sets), that requires certain provisions, restrictions, and protections enforced by the state for the preservation of their own good as deemed acceptable by the law.

A non-parent's love for a child breaks all these artificial and socially produced boundaries, and in doing so, presents a natural cure for their unnatural ills. Downpressers, be them child molesters or child advocates, work to confine and control. CLs work to give children every right that they claim for themselves. Downpressers limit a child's freedom of movement to protect safety, freedom of choice and self determination in exchange for peace of mind, and provide services in ever-increasingly restrictive environments. CLs, just by remaining outside the modes of control, are free to offer a child a complete freedom of movement, the freedom of choice (to be with the CL on their own accord), and provide services for the child as an act of personal charity rather than for the collection of paychecks, stipends, or even volunteer credit.

Downpressers establish the minor code that restricts a child's access to opportunities to improve their quality of life. The CL offers the child the step up at the drinking fountain when the child is in need of a drink. Downpressers afford the minor no right to control their body, nor do they allow the child any dignity regarding privacy in hygene and respecting the child's private space. CLs afford the child as much distance as needed, because the CL is not bound to the outdated regulations concerning the treatment of minors. Downpressers restrict a child's right to be with whom they choose in ways they choose that may upset the balance of power. CLs encourage the child's freedom of association, choice of friends, and membership in groups, because they don't have to fear loosing any power imbalance separating them from the child.

Downpressers the world over deny a child's right to express themselves, to think and say what they want, especially when the child has a perfectly legitimate reason for doing such. Under the love of a CL, the child will fear no reprisal for expressing themselves, especially when they have a legitimate gripe with the prejudices they face. Downpressers have established that nothing, even that which the child manages to purchase or work for on their own, belongs to the child, and reserve the right to abscond with any piece of property in the hands of a minor at their discretion. True CLs believe a child has the right to acquire, use, and dispose of possessions and funds as they please, and don't manipulate a child's will to do such for their own benefit.

Downpressers restrict children's rights capriciously, particularly in the area of justice and due process. No CL has ever thrown an eight year old in juvenile detention for skipping school. Downpressers are obsessed with providing for a child's general physical well-being and safety, but deprive them of other rights in the process. No true CL has ever deprived a child of a any right to self-hood based on preserving some feeling of the child's well-being. The child's well-being is only preserved by preserving all of the child's rights. Anybody who has claimed to be a CL and has not upheld any child their rights, is no CL, but a downpresser in disguise.

Where the downpresser seeks to ground the chick, the CL seeks to teach it to fly. Regulations or selfish desires can not nurture a child, only love can.

The Minor Trap

Teenagers are caught in a trap. They have the strength and ability to get out of the trap if they want to, but it is illegal for them to do so. So here we have animals caught in a trap that is too small for them, willingly keeping themselves captive to certain extents to appease their overlords. Some manage to broker a deal with their overlords and are granted short little excursions outside the trap, but most simply aren't extended the resources to enable them to take that great leap.

Each and every day they are shuffled through the maze from room to room, sitting here for a while before moving on to sit there fore a while. Some enjoy it, some make the most of it, some don't enjoy it, some can't make the most of it. Those who enjoy life inside the trap are the ones clinging to its sides, ready at the stroke of midnight to rip the veil from their heads and drop their ball and chain. Those who don't enjoy it are the ones who inevitably wear those chains the remainder of their days, whether it is legal or not.

In either case, youth is made to be something to flee from rather than something to enjoy. Youth is a prison for which there are no exits. Even if one were to escape, the mere quality of how many earth revolutions around the sun one has lived to see makes all the difference in how that individual is to be treated in the world of human beings. It has everything to do with whether they are permitted to shake themselves out from under the trap they're born into or whether they are condemned to live inside its boundaries day in and day out, happy or sad, like it or else.

Some teenage animals don't have to be wounded when cornered in the cage, some wound themselves, if only to scare away the overlords trying to corner it, if only to give it some bite. And all this so as to preserve the adult's sentimental idea of children enjoying childhood at all cost to human dignity.

Repicturing Minors

Minor is the term used to isolate young human beings apart from humanity. A minor is not human in the eyes of the law. They exist in some designation at the junction of being an animal and a piece of property for which others have specific rights to and are expected to perform specific duties on. A minor is little different than a piece of furniture--the property of it's originates by default, but with the added restriction that, unlike furniture, it can not be completely done with as its owner sees fit. For instance, a piece of worn furniture that no longer serves its usefulness can be taken out back with an axe and be done away with at it's owner's discretion without fear of social reproach. A minor, though still a piece of property, has been granted by society a right to exist and a right to be taught things--but other than this, shares more in common with the piece of furniture than with human beings--at least to the law.

The fact that a minor is technically a human being isn't one wasted on most average people, regardless of what the law has determined. The fact that the time period covered in a young human's life for which they have been set aside from humanity as minors is quite a length of time whereby many alterations in the individual appear as they develop. There are virtually miles separating a five year old and a 15 year old, and yet both are considered to be minors according to the official, legal, so-called agreed-upon definition of their existence. The miles that exist between them developmentally have been compressed back together by the force of law like a spring, so that what once seemed to stretch a 10 year developmental separation by nature, now seems to span a matter of moments.

Kids who exist between the age-determined social cultures, the proverbial 10 year old who no longer finds his preschool fascinations as fascinating but is not granted access to more mature forms of expression, spend years of their lives inevitably stuck in coast. This is what youth rights advocates call "infantilization." There's a constant expectation for kids to act half their age.

All being minors by definition, if they were to fail to distinguish themselves--in other words, fail to socially develop beyond the early childhood stage at least socially so that a 16 year old was still living the typical lifestyle of a seven year old, it wouldn't be hard to imagine society neglecting to notice. Minors, being non-human entities by definition, would not develop the way human beings are expected to. Minors would be infants from birth to the day that society "agrees" they are fit to be counted into the human clan--in most cases their 18th birthday. They are children. It's what's expected of them. And from 0 to 18, the term minor fails to recognize their developing capacity towards maturation as an adult and instead regards them as perpetual infants--helpless and about as removed from the adult as possible.

They are born and they get bigger. At no point does the law recognize that a minor can make even simple decisions for themselves. They need mom to lay out a pair of clothes in the morning and button their shirt, regardless of whether they are toddlers scrambling about on all fours or high school seniors about to assume their role in society.