Maybe you're just not doing a very good job at arguing.
Very likely. :yes:
Let's make it simple: Do you think any circumstance exists where it's acceptable and healthy for an adult male to have sexual intercourse with a nine year old girl?
The answer is actually a bit more complicated than you may want, but bear with me.
The circumstance in this case is this: the majority of men back then would have been sexually attracted to a physically sexually mature girl, regardless of age. Therefore, does this make the majority of men back then mentally unhealthy?
If the answer is yes, then we might also speculate that the majority of people living nowadays are mentally unhealthy for doing things we don't realize are indicative of poor mental health, but which will be realized in a few centuries.
Nowadays, an adult male sexually desiring a 9-year-old is mentally unhealthy, because his own sexuality didn't mature past that age. (I fully admit that I might be mistaken on this, so correct me if I'm wrong.)
As for acceptable, it was accepted by the majority back then, and they're the ones who got to determine acceptability back then. We don't, because they're dead and gone; all we can do is look at the past and say whether or not something they did would be acceptable
now, and
now, there is NO instance when sex with a 9 year old, even if she reached puberty early, is okay. If a culture nowadays is still doing that, then that culture REALLY needs to get with the times, to put it mildly, and I don't often speak out against other cultures.
Basically, here's my argument: acceptable and not acceptable doesn't apply to bygone ages except when used as examples of acceptability and non-acceptability today. When we determine whether or not something is acceptable, it's so we can enforce certain rules today; since we can't enforce our modern rules in ye olden days, we don't really get to determine whether or not something is acceptable
for them.
And as for mental health,it is my understanding that mental health is most often directly linked to whether or not an individual can function in any given society. (Again, I may be wrong about this, so correct me if I am.) Therefore, we can logically conclude that a mental state which would cause societal problems
now, but not back in times long gone, then it was not mentally unhealthy back then.
Am I making sense?
