Diary – 22 November 2003

Miranda Sawyer’s Channel 4 programme pleading for the abolition of the age of consent, Sex Before 16: Why the Law is Failing, featured the following adults: the editor of a sexually frank magazine for young girls, Bliss; a QC as a legal expert; a child protection expert; an MP; three experts in ‘teenage sexuality’; a liberal-minded historian; and a contraceptive nurse. The aggregate opinions of these experts mostly hovered around ‘empowerment’ and ‘education’, advancing arguments as to why ‘kids’ under 16 years should be trusted to decide for themselves ‘when to have sex’, as it is now so unromantically called. There seems no allowance for the pleasure of romantic yearnings: the mechanics of ‘having sex’ are all. Most notably absent from the documentary, shown last Sunday night, were parents, or anyone identifying herself (or himself) as a parent. Yet the family context in which youngsters ‘have sex’ is highly relevant to values and behaviour. We are always told that the Dutch are successful at keeping teenage pregnancy low; if so, this is directly related to the fact that more mothers stay at home in the Netherlands, and Dutch divorce figures are also low. Intact family life is the best protection against precocious sexual activity. Ms Sawyer’s dialectic boasted that the age of consent in Spain is 13, and yet the average age of loss of virginity for young women is 19. She did not go on to explain that this is because family life is much more protective in the Latin countries. Where the family is strong, the law is less significant, to be sure. The law is important in Britain because the family is so often absent. As it was from Ms Sawyer’s polemic.

I suppose it would be fair to describe Michael Moore — he is in both paperback and hardback bestseller lists, currently, with Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s My Country? — as the star of the laddish Left.