*%$@ - lock up your daughters

This is absolutely bizarre If they are going to do this to stop more people becoming criminals, then why don't they decriminalise dope for kids? Cannabis laws are also impossible to police.

Answer: For the same reason that kids who are 12 should not have sex.
Kids should not smoke dope either.
As one school principal said "It's a pity Phil Goff's parents didn't abastain from sex full time."

The Governments rationale for changing laws: Lots of people are doing it so let's change the law.

Let's change the Government at the next election. As NZ Pundit said on his blog, only the childless women of the Labour Government's cabinet could come up with something so demeaning to individual dignity and damaging to parental authority.

UPDATE Well, this is much more accurate than the Sunday Star Times - from Russell Brown, who has more time to research such things. The clause is to be dropped. Kids under 16 who have sex will still be commiting a crininal offence, and the age of consent was never going to be dropped. read this also from David Farrar, who has also got it right.

And check this out - from CNN One day after getting married, a lesbian couple filed a medical malpractice lawsuit asking that one of the women receive damages because doctors failed to detect breast cancer in her spouse.

Loss of consortium is a legal claim long available to spouses, but only newly available to gay and lesbian couples since Massachusetts began allowing same-sex marriage.

So that's why some people get married these days.