<<if you're going to argue, argue based on what I actually said.
I said, "Consenting adults". Children, even if they say "Yes" cannot give informed consent. That's why we have laws regarding 'age of consent' and children under 18 aren't allowed to sign contracts. The psychological data is clear that children do not have the cognitive development to give informed consent. (Nor do animals - as this is where this sordid argument usually leads.)>>

You are in a muddle.
Your justification for incest is "if it happened that two related, consenting adults decided to have sexual intercourse, that does not effect my life or your life in the slightest."
Likewise consenting paedophilia does not affect your life in the slightest therefore, according to your own justification, why should it bother anyone else?

The fact that it is illegal has no meaning because homosexual "marriage" is also illegal and that has no meaning to you.

<<You have also not answered the question. What impact does the activities of two consenting adults in the privacy of their bedroom have on your life, and what gives you, or anyone else, the right to proscribe those activities?>>
Who is proscribing those activities?
Opponents of same sex "marriage" merely believe that "those activities" don't constitute marriage.
Furthermore, the impact of homosexual "marriage" is that activists will be spreading their distorted doctrine into the schools where innocent, impressionable children will be indoctrinated into the homosexualists distorted way of thinking.

Your question is a subterfuge because homosexuals don't want to keep it in the bedroom, they want to infect the minds of children.

Proxy,

Your muddled blathering indicates that you have no concept of law whatsoever.

Much of this is based around consent. Consent has to be given freely, without undue influence, by someone who is capable of doing so.

A child is not considered competent to make an informed decision, neither is a mentally handicapped. So paedophilia and 99.9% of incest is legally without consent and thus rape.

Comparing this with gay couples is pathetic.

Opposition Minister for Muddled Thinking with "no concept of law whatsoever",
The commenter said "if it happened that two related, consenting adults decided to have sexual intercourse, that does not effect my life or your life in the slightest."
Likewise, I said "if it happened that (a paedophile and a consenting child) decided to have sexual intercourse, that (would not affect her) life in the slightest."
The basis of the commenter's argument is that it would not affect her life, it would not affect my life, so it's nobody else's business.
But, you claim, the difference is that the law states that a child cannot give consent!
But, the law states that incest is illegal!
Both activities are illegal.
Incest is illegal and underage sex is illegal because a child cannot lawfully consent.
You're both cherry-picking the law in stating that incest is okay because it doesn't affect you or me but then claiming that a child giving consent is not okay because children can't consent, according to law.
Aaaah, but incest is just a social construct and as moral relativists how does it affect us if two adults engage in it?
But the age of sexual consent is also just a social construct, which is evident simply by looking at other countries where children can be married off at nine years of age as per Mohammed's perfect example.

ie your argument hinges entirely on you choosing to support consent laws when it suits your argument but choosing to ignore incest and heterosexual marriage laws when it suits your argument.

Bottom line:
Moral relativists who pick and choose as it suits them are also
legal relativists who pick and choose as it suits them.

Proxy, no.

Are children capable of fully understanding the consequences of their choices?

Most people and the legal system says no. This is why they are tried under different rules when they commit crimes.

Equating adult homosexuality with paedophilia would require homosexuals to also not fully understand the consequences of their actions and therefore should have the legal status of children. Clearly this is absurd.

The idea that a child can give proper 'consent' to a paedophile is a strawman and is not equatable to consent between homosexual adults. You accuse others of muddled thinking, weed your own garden friend.

<<The idea that a child can give proper 'consent' to a paedophile is a strawman and is not equatable to consent between homosexual adults.>>

As I said:
"your argument hinges entirely on you choosing to support consent laws when it suits your argument but choosing to ignore incest and heterosexual marriage laws when it suits your argument."

Everyday in the Middle East children are deemed to be consenting to marry adults and homosexuals are being corporally, if not capitally, punished.

You cannot consider consent laws from an absolutist perspective while simultaneously applying relativism to other laws, all as it suits your agenda.

Diver Dan, you are correct, I made a mistake in typing homosexuality instead of homosexuals, but my point stands: you cannot "accept" a person while placing limits on the expression of their sexuality and/or right to marry.

You do not accept a lifestyle centred on alcohol abuse yet do not lobby for the Marriage Act to exlude alcoholics from wedlock. how many alcoholics have caused harm to theuir own children within marriage?

If you *truly* accepted homosexuals, you would not place conditions upon that acceptance. And if you weren't so hung up on the activites they may select in the bedroom you might be able to see them as just human beings with the same rights as anyone else - all rights, not just the ones you condescend to grant them.

When it comes down to it, the reaosn why your opinion is invalidated in a legal discussion is that you would much prefer a society based on a few simple rules of Christianity. I do not accept your right to use a religious text to legislate my values and morals, or those of any citizen in this country. I do not subscribe to your faith and your faith, while perfectly good for you, is not an appropriate mechanism to control me. As a legal framework it is worse than useless as it is full of rediculous and contradictory rules, and was written centuries before the development of science and technology that now surrounds us. It has no more authority than any other creation myth.

Cling to it if it makes your life easier, but please don't try to make my country's laws conform to your interpretation of cherry-picked sections of a collection of parables and fantasies.