This is such a charged subject that it will be proceeded with only with great caution as this initiative proceeds.

If anyone doubts that such caution is necessary he or she should simply remember what happened to a candidate in the 2012 Irish Presidential elections because of an interest in the 'morals' of Ancient Greece and an intervention on behalf of a younger colleague accused of 'inappropriate or illegal sex'. Even trying to write this paragraph is fraught with the difficulties one faces in any attempt to discuss this all too human subject rationally.

The starkest of approaches will be taken for now here in the hope that refinement may become possible as we proceed. As with the other subjects discussed here we are less interested in right and wrong, innocence or guilt, as we are in lack of due process and cruel punishment. We are interested in false allegations, solicitors involved in collusion, the motivation of compensation, courts swayed by the dominant narrative, allegations made as part of marital breakdown, the criminalization of normal activities between teenagers, media frenzy, and naming and shaming to name just a few.

Young people are the ones to be affected most by the war on 'inappropriate' sex, which has two main fronts for them, the right to privacy, that is from any form of surveillance of their intimate interactions, and the second their right to make their own decisions in such matters once they have reached what for millennia has been accepted as sexual maturity. If young people are denied their right to privacy in the critical matter of their emerging sexuality, they are less likely to become mature and balanced adults. That right to privacy is protected by both the European and UN conventions on human rights.

If this right is to be protected, young people need the courage to tell both the state and moral busybodies to stay out of their intimate affairs, for which only the young persons involved are responsible for.

Romeo and Juliet

There has been a perverse development in the US, which has spread to the UK and is in danger of invading all the English-speaking countries including Ireland, as these countries seem inclined to adopt the US moral panics and their subsequent legislative consequences. This is the criminalization of young persons, especially teenagers, but even also much younger children, for intimacies and explorations formerly considered to be a part of normal development, now deemed criminal by draconian American morality laws. One of the worst of these developments is the criminalization of teenagers for what sympathetic observers refer to as 'Romeo and Juliet' situations. Juliet was fifteen and younger in that famous story, so certain intimate activities between them today in the US would criminalize Romeo for life and effectively ruin him, while the legal situation in the UK is moving in that direction.

The expression 'Romeo and Juliet' is particularly potent and not in favour with conservative lawmakers and enforcers because it represents a great work of art, indeed an archetype of human love and tragedy which is now carved into the human consciousness. It is clear that the criminalization of normal activities between young lovers, no matter how unwise they may be, is wrong, but the battalions of the law just roll on in draconian manner regardless. The spread of this particular criminalization into countries beyond the US and UK needs to be halted.

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