A MEMBER of the House Legal Affairs Committee yesterday defended its decision to raise the age of consent for heterosexuals to 17 as a way of not having to reduce the age for homosexuals to 16.
Both the state legal services and deputies were unable to say what the implications of raising the legal age of consent for heterosexuals would be, however, since it will make it illegal for anyone under 17 to have sex.
Deputy Attorney-general Petros Clerides said 17 had been the age put forward by deputies and that he didn’t know what “they were thinking”.
The government was forced to reduce — against its will — the age of consent for homosexuals to 16, to bring the law into line with that on heterosexuals to appease Europe.
But the House compromise of raising the age of consent for heterosexuals could cause legal problems.
In essence it means that anyone having sexual relations with a 16-year-old will be committing a criminal offence. Even though this is currently legal, next week it won’t be.
Legal Affairs Committee member DISY deputy Ionas Nicolaou confirmed to the Cyprus Mail yesterday that this was indeed the case. But it is likely that under the new law, in most cases involving underage consenting sex such as between teenagers, the authorities would probably turn as blind eye, as is sometimes the case now with girls over 15.
Nicolaou also said that deputies had inserted a provision in the new law to permit marriage between heterosexuals, with parental consent, at the age of 16. But sex between such couples will still be illegal until after the wedding.
“We don’t think the new situation will cause any big problems in changing the age for girls from 16 to 17,” Nicolaou said. “I believe that the authorities will not be so strict about that.”
Nicolaou admitted that the only reason the law was changed was because the government was under pressure from Europe to equalise all laws relating to heterosexuals and homosexuals. “It’s something we had to do,” he said.
Nicolaou said parliament believed that Cypriot society was not ready to accept a drop in the age of consent for homosexuals to 16.
“I’m not very happy because we changed the age, but we have to do something that comes from Europe and the only way that we can do this is to change the age, because otherwise we would have a problem with the other side” (the gay lobby).
The new law had been due to go before parliament today, but the session has been cancelled after yesterday’s National Guard helicopter crash.
Several Euro MPs warned late last year that they would vote against the island’s EU accession unless changes in the consent laws were made as soon as possible. Each member state is allowed to set its own age of consent, as long as equality exists for all citizens, homosexual or heterosexual.
In 1993 gay architect Alecos Modinos won his battle at the European Court of Human Rights forcing Cyprus to decriminalise homosexuality. The law was changed in 1998.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
