The Age of Consent (For Meg)

By consent, here I mean the consenting of individuals to live in a society. Namely their consenting to offer up some of their liberties and power to a centralised government in return for a perceived increase in security and order.

However, my point is also linked to the 'age of consent' in the more ubiquitous sense; as that age at which one is legally allowed to engage in sexual activity.

But first let's make a distinction between two theories of how a people give consent to their rulers... the distinction between explicit and tacit consent.

Explicit consent is the everyday conceptualisation of consent, when someone has a clear choice and chooses to allow a particular course of action. For example, I explicitly consented to allow someone to go ahead of me in the supermarket queue this morning.

Tacit consent is in actuality the more pervasive form of consent, and refers to when someone upholds a norm or convention merely by failing to oppose it. For example I tacitly consent to being governed by Her Majesty because I haven't (yet) taken up arms against her/ left the country.

And this is where the recent case of Megan Stammers comes in...

One of the key arguments made by Locke is that the legitimacy of a Government rests upon the people giving their consent to be ruled. He postulates that this can come in the form of tacit consent, but only if there is the feasible potential ability of any individual to withdraw their consent... Without such a measure then the government becomes a totalitarian dictatorship as there is no alternative offered...

He argues that the two methods of withdrawing one's tacit consent are to a) express explicit discontent by overthrowing the government, whether by ballot or bullet, or b) leaving the jurisdiction of said government...

This is exactly what Megan Stammers and Jeremy Forrest did. They were born into the subjection of a government over which they had no part in creating or shaping and they therefore chose to withdraw their consent due to their inability to live under the laws created by that government. Explicitly they took issue with the law defining the 'age of consent' and therefore emigrated to France where they expected to live under a law more preferable to themselves.

Now this is exactly how Locke says tacit consent should work. If one doesn't like a law they should work to repeal it, or leave its jurisdiction. They ought not be held accountable under that law if they do not recognise its authority and are actively seeking to leave the society that it governs. Any attempt by the British government to prosecute either of them under the law they reject is simply demonstrating that the theory of 'tacit consent' is a lie, and proving that this government is unlimited, unaccountable and illegitimate... a terrifying prospect...