UN-Backed Organization Claims Minors Can Consent
Image: Norbu GYACHUNG on Unsplash
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), a United Nations (U.N.) backed organization, released a report in March claiming that minors can consent to sexual relations, even with an adult. Even though western nations have prohibited such acts for decades and have outlined minors’ inability to provide informed consent, the U.N. appears to be making an attempt at normalizing relations with minors.
The report contained several progressive assertions, including unwavering support for abortion, and a recommendation to never criminally penalize women who intentionally engage in behaviors while pregnant that could result in fetal harm or death. Several states have laws classifying alcohol use while knowingly pregnant as child abuse. However, the one statement ICJ made, garnering the most public attention, is the claim that children not only have the ability to consent to sex — but also the right to do so.
“[The] International Commission of Jurists promotes and protects human rights through the Rule of Law, by using its unique legal expertise to develop and strengthen national and international justice systems . . . ICJ aims to ensure the progressive development and effective implementation of international human rights and international humanitarian law; secure the realization of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights; safeguard the separation of powers; and guarantee the independence of the judiciary and legal profession.”
ICJ — March 2023
The ICJ wrote in their March report “sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law.” The organization claims that “the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them.”
In the report, ICJ advocates for decriminalizing “consensual” sex with minors, and claims that this is a “human rights-based approach” to understanding and implementing laws. Free Beacon claims that the report received support from UNAIDS and from the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Several conservative activists have sounded the “slippery slope” alarm for years, and have warned the public that radical gender theory would ultimately lead to this conclusion. Under the progressive worldview, children can “consent” to sterilization through puberty “blockers” (also known as chemical castration drugs, which have historically been used on sex offenders). This ideology says that minors can “consent” to surgically removing their own body parts. Progressivism argues that children can “consent” to the permanent alteration of their bodies because of an inherently, sexual “gender” identity. So if radical gender ideology is true, why couldn’t children “consent” to other things of a sexual nature?
Grace Melton, an analyst for the Heritage Foundation said, “Not only does [the ICJ’s report] suggest that minors may be mature enough to consent to sexual activity, but it also asserts that ‘criminal law may not in any way impair’ the so-called right to abortion or to ‘gender-affirming care.'”
In many ways, the destigmatization of “minor attraction” has already begun. Two years ago, a professor at Old Dominion University argued that pedophiles shouldn’t be called such a derogatory term, but instead, they should be referred to as “minor-attracted persons” or MAPs. This professor claimed that this sick and twisted attraction is in fact “normal” and can find its home under the inclusive rainbow umbrellas of sexual orientations.
Age of consent laws exist to prevent child exploitation and abuse, at a time in their lives when their brain is not even close to fully developed, and when they are most susceptible to manipulation and grooming tactics. Children are physically incapable of giving informed consent because of the restrictions placed on them by their biological timeline, not simply because a governing body decided it to be.
This is the leading problem with a societal consent-based morality. Consenting to participate in the overindulgence of a harmful substance, food, or an act, for example, does not make the substance, food, or act suddenly moral or “good.” Many conservatives would argue that consent alone does not automatically make an action acceptable, that is the role of objective truth. In this case, a child’s “consent” does not make a morally reprehensible action just. Destigmatizing and decriminalizing child abuse will perpetuate evil, and cannot be tolerated in western societies and cultures.
