This is the response I wrote to a post by a new member to the NYRA Forums, and I figured it does a good job of introducing people to the cause who may have reservations or misunderstandings about it all, so I’m posting it here for everyone to enjoy:

Hey, thanks for joining the forums, and thanks for your interest in starting a chapter. Its great to have you on board. You’ve pointed out some common criticisms that new people to the cause bring up, and I will walk you through each issue with some good responses. Before I do though, I want to introduce to you the basic premise of our organization and our movement. It is no accident that we make comparisons between us and the Civil Rights Movement, we believe that movement, as well as movements for women’s rights and gay rights, are kin of ours. The same basic principle underlies all our work, the belief that people should be seen as people, and treated fairly from that.

Youth are not seen as people, they are seen as property, and are rarely treated fairly.

It is this basic principle, that people should be seen for who they are, not what they are, and not because of characteristics that a person can’t change like age, sex, or race, that informs all the issues we take on. For the voting age for example, there are many good outcomes that we would see from lowering the voting age like increased voter turnout, a better educated electorate, stronger democracy and the like, but we see these as good side-effects and aren’t the fundamental reason we support lowering the voting age. The fundamental reason is that the voting age, as it exists now is age discrimination against youth, and it is unjust. A law that allows stupid adults to vote, and prevents smart youth from voting is hypocritical and unfair.

Also, in a democracy in which it is the people who make the decisions, it is unfair and damaging to disenfranchise youth, thus denying them that equal treatment and equal suffrage. For democracy to function we must trust the people to make good decisions, and give them the trust that they will. Does that mean voters always make good decisions? Not necessarily. But we trust them to make good decisions AND to make bad decisions. That is what freedom of choice, and that is what democracy is all about. If we didn’t accept that, we should just seek out a small group of elite intellectuals to rule over us and make decisions for us in every matter. So if we trust adults to make good and bad decisions (and yes, they make both quite often) then why not give the same trust to youth?

Our positions on the drinking age, curfews, entertainment, and others all come from this very same principle of fairness, rights, freedom and democracy. Can there be negative consequences from drinking, staying out late, and watching violent or pornographic movies? Of course. Those consequences of course though are for all people, young and old. If, in that spirit of democracy and freedom we allow adults to suffer the negative consequences from these issues, why not youth? Treating these two classes of people radically different is not fair, and its not right.

Hello,
I’m a new member here. I don’t mean to come in criticising but I have a problem with some of our stances.
My first concern is with lowering the drinking age. Our defense of the stance is that it could allow the government to promote good drinking habits and that its pointless to have it anyway because everybody drinks. However it has likewise been proven that youth have not yet fully developed their reasoning skills and therefore might not foresee the consequences of their actions fully. It is shown through simple statistics the stagering amount of deaths due to teen drunk driving and lowering the restrictions on this already proven dangerous substance will only further their accesability to it, and thus, increase the rate of accidents caused by drunk driving.

Actually, your proof is quite sketchy and questionable. There is a good deal of proof out there that adult levels of reasoning are reached at like 12-14. Perhaps earlier under proper conditions. Also, studies show that older adults actually decrease in brain mass and reasoning ability, would you suggest we yank away the right to drink once someone reaches 70 or so? As for drunk driving, the truth of the matter is much different. MADD states in their propaganda that raising the drinking age saved a bunch of lives, but honestly the facts show quite the opposite. Raising the drinking age to 21 did nothing to stop drunk driving, it just changed 18-20 year old drunk drivers into 21-24 drunk drivers.

In fact by your own admission, teens are still drinking and driving, so you have to admit that the law isn’t working. Teens still drink. You are afraid of course that if we let them drink, then they’ll drink much more and get into accidents much more. Until the law changes, we can’t say 100% what will happen, you and I are both saying what we THINK will happen. Neither of us know 100%. What we can do of course is look at other places, other countries that already let teens drink. Far and away the experiences of these countries has been that allowing teens to drink has not led to lots of drunk driving or alcoholism or anything. In fact countries with lower drinking ages have LESS drunk driving than the United States. I think that’s a pretty good example we should learn from.

My second is with our stance on entertainment. It is in the best intrest of the youth to have a restriction on what they may and may not view. Do you beleive that a five year old needs to see a graphic sex scene in a movie? I don’t. And that some of those restrictions are put in there for protection and to allow parents the choice on what their children should, and should not, be viewing.

Those restrictions don’t give the parents more choice, they take it away. Instead of parents deciding what kids should see, its the movie theaters, and ultimately its the government deciding. If a parent is alright with letting his/her kids go see an R rated movie, then by stopping that kid from seeing that movie, you are violating the choice of that parent.

Of course you have to also question what the real harm is by seeing an explosion or two, or *gasp* a breast at a Super Bowl halftime show. I don’t think it causes irreversible damage to people, and studies have shown this.

I also feel that despite our want for no curfew, it does serve a purpose. Youth do not need to be roaming the streets at midnight and neither do adults. The ones that do, put themselves in danger and may be doing unlawful things during the late night anyway. Some curfews are for everyones protection.

Well if the curfew was for youth and adults, then NYRA wouldn’t have a problem with it. The fact that the law singles out one group of people for discrimination makes it unjust. It is just as unjust as a law saying black people can’t be out after 11:30, or just women. If you thought a curfew was good for all people would you support a law that had a curfew just for black folks? I hope not. In order to really get what this organization stands for, you have to see that for the same reason we absolutely oppose a youth curfew.

And to tack on to all of those I have mentioned it weakens our cause to take such a liberal stance on hotbutton issues in our country. The people we lobby have to get re-elected and lifting the ban on cinema age restrictions in our country will upset a lot of their adult constituents, especially in our (unfortunetly) ever growing conservative nation.
We must take stances that have absolutely no holes in them to give legitimacy to those stances. We must pick and choose which causes we truly support and are needed, and which ones would be nice, but if we really looked at them, might not be in our best intrest.
Again, I don’t mean to be criticising so much but that is how I feel and I would like to know how others feel about it. BTW thanks for reading such a long post……..:)

I agree with you, and I absolutely believe we have picked issues without holes in them. They are important issues that affect a large number of people, and are morally right to take on. Does that mean they are necessarily popular or widely accepted? No. But if everyone supported youth rights there would be no reason for this organization to exist. We exist precisely because they are controversial. Our presence is needed all the more.

But again, to understand these issues, and to understand why they aren’t full of holes like you think, you really have to change how you look at young people. Try seeing them (or yourself) as people. People who deserve just as much respect as someone over 18. People who can be trusted to make good (or bad) decisions, like other people. People who shouldn’t be arrested just for the color of their skin, or their birthdate.

It may seem like a tall order, and it may take a little bit, but I encourage you to try. Ultimately it doesn’t come down to facts and figures, but it comes down to a willingness to open your mind up enough to consider facts, experiences, and perspectives outside of your comfort zone. If you can give it a shot, I’m sure you’ll find there is ample evidence to support our positions. This is what the Civil Rights Movement had to go through, this is what the Women’s Rights Movement had to go through, and this what we have to go through. I hope you stick with us through the many exciting world changing battles to come.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 10th, 2005 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Youth Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.