Consent
Consent is a key issue in sexual ethics. Almost all systems of ethics insist, as a minimum, that all participants consent to a sexual activity. Sexual ethics (which is reflected in laws) also considers whether a person is capable of giving consent and the sort of acts they can consent to. In western countries, the legal concept of "informed consent" often sets the public standards on this issue. Children, the mentally handicapped, the mentally ill, animals, and people under the influence of drugs or alcohol might be considered in certain situations as lacking an ability to give an informed consent. Another issue surrounding consent is who is legally entitled not to give, or to withdraw, sexual consent. Rape of a wife by a husband remains legal in many countries, and was long legal in many others, because the law of those countries considers consent to marriage the equivalent of consent to sex. In the United States, Maouloud Baby v. State of Maryland is a state court case ruling that a person can withdraw sexual consent, and that continuing sexual activity in the absence of consent constitutes rape.
Sexual acts which are illegal, and often considered unethical, because of the absence of consent include rape and molestation.
Enthusiastic consent is typically the focus of liberal sexual ethics, rather than marriage.
Read more about this topic: Sexual Ethics
Famous quotes containing the word consent:
“Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, but that to do that it is absolutely necessary, and indeed quite inevitable, to torture to death only one tiny creature, the little girl who beat her breast with her little fist, and to found the edifice on her unavenged tears—would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)
“In making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Celestial Cupid her fam’d son advanc’t,
Holds his dear Psyche sweet intranc’t
After her wandring labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal Bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn,”
—John Milton (1608–1674)