Via Guido, I note this press release from the Libertarian Alliance's Sean Gabb.

Brace yourself, dear reader, but I'm going to go into bat for the government here, and against the Libertarian Alliance - at least up to a point.

First, the principle of freedom of choice only applies - only makes sense - if that choice is being freely exercised by mature consenting adults. I don't believe that those below the full age of maturity have a free choice, and I think it's silly to pretend that they do. The differing age limits attaching to various "adult" activities do indeed lead to absurdities, but this is nothing new. For example, that someone can legally have sex at 16, but not buy a video depicting two other people having sex until the age of 18, is silly. That someone can get married at 16 but not buy a bottle of champagne with which to toast their bride is equally absurd.

But this is not, in itself, an argument for libertarianism. It is a sensible and long-established principle that as children get older they take on the rights and responsibilities of maturity piecemeal and step by step - no-one suggests, for example, that 14 year-olds should be exempt from criminal responsibility; but nor do many people believe they should be allowed to have sex with 45 year-old men. A 12 year-old may have a bank account but not drive a car. And this is perfectly sensible.

So unless Dr Gabb is arguing that children under 16 should be stripped of such rights, and that the day of a person's 16th birthday should be an absolute watershed, before which children have no rights or capacity, and upon attainment of which they become full adults, the argument is not about whether there should be different ages for different activities; but rather in what order we should lift the prohibitions, one by one or group by group, until the last barrier to full adulthood is lifted, at age 16 or 18 or 21 or whatever. Consistency, on this measure, is a desirable but not a necessary feature of the law. That someone of 16 can have sex but not a cigarette is indeed absurd, but no more so than their inability legally to enjoy an alcoholic drink or peruse the curves of a Playmate. In any system of graduated passage from zero capacity to full capacity, certain such anomalies will always exist.

Second, the use of this example, and in particular the use of the word "sodomise", strike me as slightly troubling. Dr Gabb is surely an intelligent man, and knows that the verb he has chosen is both slightly archaic and, more to the point, generally taken to be pejorative. Why raise the spectre of a grown man "sodomising a schoolboy" instead of, say, two sixteen year-olds having consenting heterosexual sex in a bedroom and then lighting up afterwards? There is nothing to stop a libertarian being judgemental, as regular readers of this blog will be all too aware; but when your entire political philosophy is built on the bedrock of tolerance of other people's choices, it seems odd, to put it no more strongly than that, to choose to describe a consensual sexual act using a word which is commonly used in a pejorative sense.

Third, in the circumstances it is perhaps worth pointing out that a grown man fucking a 16 year-old boy, or indeed a 77 year-old woman, in a public toilet is indeed committing a criminal offence under s.71 (1) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and liable to up to 6 months in prison and a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, ie £5000.

Since the current maximum fine for selling - selling - cigarettes to minors is £2500, it is surely disingenuous to compare giving a 16 year-old boy a smoke with having sex with him in a public toilet, and to then claim that government legislation demonstrates that New Labour consider the former to be a greater evil than the latter. They may or may not take that view: but the available evidence, in as far as it demonstrates anything, tends to refute and not support Dr Gabb's assertion.

For the record, in a spat between this illiberal government of bastards and a civil liberties group, I would stoutly back the Libertarian Alliance 99 times out of 100, I agree with Dr Gabb that 16 year-olds should be allowed to smoke, and this is therefore a law which I do not support. But I don't agree that the government has no right to legislate to prevent 16 year-olds doing certain things that 18 year-olds are permitted to do, and I'm not sure that the best way to defend the right of adults to indulge in harmful habits is to fight for the right of children to do so as well.