WI: A Teenagers' rights movement in the 1960s

Well, you already had the 26th Amendment passed in 1971, and we got rid of the draft after Vietnam. Other than lowering the drinking age, I'm not sure what else a teen rights movement could reasonably ask for.
 
Well, you already had the 26th Amendment passed in 1971, and we got rid of the draft after Vietnam. Other than lowering the drinking age, I'm not sure what else a teen rights movement could reasonably ask for.
More respect from society. Less zeal by society to protect them from themselves.
 
This wouldn't be in the 1960s, but one way something like this could happen is if Columbine was a lot worse and resulted in draconian restrictions on teenagers (expulsions left and right for stepping even slightly out of line, harsh censorship of video games and music, etc.). That could lead to a youth movement to try and loosen things.
 
This is more or less what you had with 1968 in France and to a large extent the youth movement in the US
Yet they grew up to become Helicopter Parents.
So IMHO you'd need a constitutional amendment that similar to the first two restricts the governments authority to pass restrictions on teenagers, no matter how many adult voters want them or how many "experts" claim it's for their own good.
 
Well, you already had the 26th Amendment passed in 1971, and we got rid of the draft after Vietnam. Other than lowering the drinking age, I'm not sure what else a teen rights movement could reasonably ask for.
How about safe, well-run shelters for battered teenagers?

Some fathers wage war against their teenage sons. Some mothers wage war against their teenage daughters.
 
Or, the preacher Joel Osteen was trying to give a hard case for forgiveness and make the point that forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.

Bullshit. You want a hard case, how about a mother who turns a blind eye to her new boyfriend sexually abusing her teenage daughter? And this shit happens on a fairly regular basis.

To some extent the mother doesn't know what to do about 'mere' suspicion, she drifts, and she intellectually justifies the drift to herself in some way.

And to some extent, she makes her choices. She decides getting and keeping a man is more important than her daughter's welfare. She may even blame the daughter for the boyfriend's behavior.

And when the daughter finally escapes this situation and gets some positives in her life going. Well, later in her twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and more, she might have a much harder time forgiving her mother than the son-of-a-bitch boyfriend.

So, yes, earlier forthright addressing of sexual abuse, and safe shelters for teenagers.
 
Yet they grew up to become Helicopter Parents.
So IMHO you'd need a constitutional amendment that similar to the first two restricts the governments authority to pass restrictions on teenagers, no matter how many adult voters want them or how many "experts" claim it's for their own good.

Thing is, that would fly in the face of a lot of the social-welfare policies that were advocated by the left.

Good luck getting the teachers' unions to sign onto the idea that students should be allowed to quit school as soon as they turn 13. Or feminists to agree that if porn publishers wanna pay a 15 year old girl to pose naked in hardcore magazines, and the girl wants to say yes, it's nobody else's business but the consenting parties. Or the ACLU to support giving teenager criminals the same punishments as adults.

And a lof of that(eg. fifteen year old porn stars) would offend conservatives as well, not to mention huge sections of the general public.
 
Or feminists to agree that if porn publishers wanna pay a 15 year old girl to pose naked in hardcore magazines, and the girl wants to say yes, it's nobody else's business but the consenting parties.
That's not what I meant, and you know it. Would anybody be ok with slaveowners making porn with their slaves in it?
giving teenager criminals the same punishments as adults.
Already happens a lot, and Bob Dole advocated it in his Presidential campaign.
Yet they grew up to become Helicopter Parents.
So IMHO you'd need a constitutional amendment that similar to the first two restricts the governments authority to pass restrictions on teenagers, no matter how many adult voters want them or how many "experts" claim it's for their own good.
Plenty of "experts" once claimed that restricting blacks and women was for their own good.
 
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:evilsmile: So we can forget all the problems about certifying teens as adults for murder and what-not? Because it would be automatic unless you can prove the teen is "mental".

And all the shrinks claiming teen minds aren't developed enough to understand the consequences of their actions can go dive off the pier?

That aside, it's a bit more complicated than "rights". With rights come responsibilities. And teens don't like responsibilities. I can remember that far back.:winkytongue:
 

RousseauX

Donor
Aside from the voting age being lowered to match the military draft age, I'm not aware of any such movements.
Read about 1968 in France, one of the slogan was "We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom" it was largely a protest about getting "respect" from the older generation and opening up universities to a wide range of applicants. It was very much a strike about youth rights.
 
Well, you already had the 26th Amendment passed in 1971, and we got rid of the draft after Vietnam. Other than lowering the drinking age, I'm not sure what else a teen rights movement could reasonably ask for.
Look up curfew laws and the troubled teen industry.
 
DarkLord wrote:

overoceans said:

That's not what I meant, and you know it. Would anybody be ok with slaveowners making porn with their slaves in it?

No, but once blacks were emancipated and Jim Crow abolished, most people were okay with blacks being allowed to enter into all the same sorts of contracts that whites were allowed to enter into. I don't think you'd ever get a majority thinking the same thing about fifteen year olds.



 
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Darklord wrote:

overoceans said:
giving teenager criminals the same punishments as adults.

Already happens a lot, and Bob Dole advocated it in his Presidential campaign.


But my point is that liberals would not support it, because they tend to regard teenagers below a certain age as being in need of special protection. So you'd never get the kind of activist or legislative support that fuelled other civil-rights movements.

Basically, a teenagers-rights movement would attract doctrinaire libertarians, and almost nobody else.
 
I'd like to point out that Pelosi said that she's ok with a lower voting age and Gingrich said that "adolescence is a failed experiement."
 
I'd like to point out that Pelosi said that she's ok with a lower voting age and Gingrich said that "adolescence is a failed experiement."

But I'm doubting that Pelosi has endorsed giving teenagers the full gamut of adult rights, which I assume would be the basic idea of the teenagers-rights movement.

As for Gingrich, I think his private views have always gravitated somewhat toward eccentric utopianism, so it wouldn't surprise me if he's in favour of abolishing adolescence as a social and legal concept. No way you're gonna be able to sell that to the Republican Party as a whole, though.

Now having said that, I personally would support establishing 16 as a universal age of majority for all things: voting, drinking, sex(regardless of the ages or status of the partners involved), quitting school, answering for your crimes as an adult, etc. But so much of that would be antithetical to the views of either side of the political spectrum, that it could never be welded into one big political movement.
 
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