In Hammurabi's Code fathers could literally sell their kids into slavery. This seems strange, shouldn’t society protect kids? But it turns out that’s a relatively recent idea, instead there were rules around what happens when both parents die but children were plentiful and many died or where even killed by their parents without consequence.
Which doesn’t mean I disagree with them, just that their argument isn’t sound. Slavery was also depressingly common and I am glad it’s become vastly less common today.
generally, human civilization is us picking and choosing sensible/humane parts of cultures we encounter. the romans who conquered greece were of barbarian culture, only civilized by their adoption of the greek culture, which they later spread to parts of the world the conquered. the greeks remained uncivilized for a long time as well. they attribute most of their development to encounters with egyptians and babylonians. thus, it's almost possible to see a primitive culture that upheld some of the core values of our civilization today: human rights (not too far back but pericle's athens abolished slave trade), etc.
If you go to Wikipedia for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide
“Most Stone Age human societies routinely practiced infanticide, and estimates of children killed by infanticide in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras vary from 15 to 50 percent.”
“Infanticide became forbidden in Europe and the Near East during the 1st millennium.” Except if you dig into the details those bans where very local, it continues:
“Christianity forbade infanticide from its earliest times, which led Constantine the Great and Valentinian I to ban infanticide across the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Yet, infanticide was not unacceptable in some wars and infanticide in Europe reached its peak during World War II (1939-45), during the Holocaust and the T4 Program.[2] The practice ceased in Arabia in the 7th century after the founding of Islam, since the Quran prohibits infanticide. Infanticide of male babies had become uncommon in China by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), whereas infanticide of female babies became more common during the One-Child Policy era (1979–2015). During the period of Company rule in India, the East India Company attempted to eliminate infanticide but were only partially successful, and female infanticide in some parts of India still continues. Infanticide is now very rare in industrialised countries but may persist elsewhere.”
Thus as far as we can tell it was common globally from the Stone Age up until quite recently. Also of note, those bans wouldn’t necessarily be reflected as a change in all cultures in that area only the options of those running the country.
> At basically no point in history has it been the case that the sole responsibility for the well being of children lay entirely with the parents.
The state will _inevitably exercise power_. Only a vigilant citizenry can hope to modulate it.
Republicans can completely ignore California and Democrats can completely ignore the Bible Belt (except GA which is now Purple)
As far as what the state can do. Again as a parent, when my children were minors, we chose trusted family members to be their guardian. If that wasn’t an option, we would have chosen friends.
No matter how you feel about the abortion issue for instance, even in conservative states, the majority of people don’t want more restrictions as proven by recent ballot initiatives, yet the politicians are still passing laws.
In my home state (Florida) the government is wasting all kinds of taxpayer money going after Disney and out of the list of things Florida and especially my city (Orlando) cares about is that Disney spoke out against a policy.
So you can’t have multiple marriage licenses, but you can legally hold a public polygamist civil ceremony followed by “cohabitation.”
Granted people want the legal befits of a recognized marriage rather than the state to treating it as two actors preforming a ceremony as part of a play. But such distinction are relevant when you say something is banned.
“On December 13, 2013, a federal judge, spurred by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups,[25] struck down the parts of Utah's bigamy law that criminalized cohabitation, while also acknowledging that the state may still enforce bans on having multiple marriage licenses.[26] The state of Utah appealed the decision, arguing that polygamist Kody Brown (whose relationships were documented in the show Sister Wives) lacked standing to bring his civil suit, since his county prosecutor, Jeff Buhman, had not followed through on any plan to prosecute the Brown family. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals (Denver) agreed with Utah and overturned the previous decision, thus effectively recriminalizing polygamy as a felony.[27]”
Of note, the state of Utah won the appeal because they didn’t bring action against the group rather than because the lower court’s decision was incorrect. Thus polygamy can remain illegal as long as nobody is ever prosecuted for it.
It also mentions: “Given that almost no polygamists bother to seek a second marriage license, the practice of forming a family with more than one spousal-styled relationship is very difficult to criminalize. In the majority of cases, the additional partner is considered a wife in the context of religious beliefs. Legally speaking, the practice is more akin to adultery.”
> If even one of the marriages is a legal, civil marriage, then Kody and the wives are probably guilty of bigamy under Utah's definition. The Utah Code states that a "person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person." This is broad in three respects -- it criminalizes the behavior of both purported spouses, not just the one who is already married; it, as interpreted by the state's highest court, includes religious ceremonies undertaken without a civil license as falling under the heading of "purporting to marry"; and it criminalizes cohabitation (as well as actual marriage) with a second person while married to someone else.
The family brought the lawsuit, which was thrown out because they didn’t have standing. They lacked standing because the government hadn’t prosecuted them.
If the community’s role is to protect children, maybe the community shouldn’t be creating the trap in the first place.
Children are curious creatures. It’s natural that they are curious about sex and the human body. In the past they could look around and see members of their family, tribe, etc nude and having sex. Now we’ve taken that away and made it taboo. You can either do nothing, try and lock it away harder, or go the other way.
It’s a very complex issue though so there’s nothing close to easy. But this kind of legislation seems like a fight that has just as much to do with a particular religious viewpoint as it does anything to do with “protect the children”.
But your attitude is, in a historical context, weird. At basically no point in history has it been the case that the sole responsibility for the well being of children lay entirely with the parents. If you look, for instance, at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (see the Parenthood article section Parental Responsibilities), you will see, for instance, that throughout most of western history and for most people, there is an explicit or implicit understanding that it is, in fact, the parents who operate as stewards of children _on behalf of_ society and that the ultimate locus of responsibility for the security and well being of children is the society at large, not the parents. This is why, for instance, the state is typically understood to have the right to remove a child from the home of an abusive or neglectful parent. Given that understanding, there is a commensurate power in society to make rules which may protect children and in our particular historical moment these rules take the form of laws at multiple levels of government.
It places a powerful (and disordered) burden on parents to make them _exclusively_ responsible for the safety and wellbeing of their children.