WHY does it matter what the States decide on the homosexual age of consent this month?

One thing is certain – it will have very little impact on what age gay youngsters in Guernsey start to have sex. Strangely, when in the throes of passion, the last thing teenagers – gay or straight – tend to focus on is whether the States of Guernsey approve of their actions. Biology, rather than legislation, tends to dictate when somebody becomes sexually active.

The decision will, of course, determine whether those youngsters are technically criminals. However, important though that may be in a symbolic way, the chances of anybody being prosecuted for homosexual acts with a 17-year-old are pretty remote. Firstly, who is going to report them and then act as a prosecution witness? Secondly, no law officer would consider pursuing such a prosecution knowing that the current law is in clear breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

That’s one reason why the law must change. Guernsey signed up to the convention – which incidentally has nothing whatsoever to do with the EU – decades ago. Far more recently, the States voted overwhelmingly to embed its principles in our domestic law.

If Guernsey’s word is to mean anything, we must now abide by our convention obligations. If we are not willing to do that, then we should seek to withdraw from the convention and accept the international disapprobation and reputational damage that comes with that.

More importantly, the age should be changed because it is simply wrong, hurtful and bigoted to discriminate against someone because of their nature. It sends a signal that, although tolerated, they are second-class citizens. Many homosexuals will not want to have sex at 16, just as many heterosexuals won’t, but the differing legal ages of consent are still stigmatising.

Whether one is gay or straight is a genetic lottery and those we discriminate against in this way could easily be our children or grandchildren. Well done to the leader of the local Methodist church for recognising that central point about equality conferring dignity.

A lot of arrant nonsense has been said by those uncomfortable with the proposed change.

Visions of 50-year-old men preying on 17-year-old boys have been conjured up. Of course that’s an unpleasant thought, but no more so than a 50-year-old man preying on a 17-year-old girl. In reality, most youngsters’ early sexual experiences are with someone in their own age group – despite the ‘Mrs Robinson’ stereotype.

Homosexuals have been equated with paedophiles. That is so deeply ignorant that it is probably best left to condemn itself.

Doubts have been raised over whether people ‘really know their own sexuality’ at 16. Of course they do. I did. Didn’t you? Anyway, that’s an argument for an equal, but higher, age of consent of, say, 18. Such a move wouldn’t be discriminatory but it would be the biological equivalent of Canute’s instruction to the sea.

First as a deputy and then as a reporter, I lived through several deeply unpleasant debates on homosexuality. Remarks were made in those proceedings that must have been very hurtful to the Bailiwick’s gay residents: ‘We are not going to be known as the island where the pansies come out early’ and ‘These people breed – not by procreation but by contamination’.

How cruelly and deliberately hurtful can someone be just because another person is different from themselves and they personally find that other person’s predilections distasteful? If such things were said about someone of a different race, it would lead to instant calls for resignations.

I hope this time around the debate can be more adult, civilised and less wounding. No one is asking heterosexual deputies to empathise with gay sex but simply to show tolerance towards those who just happen to be different from themselves.

While I do believe that our human rights treaty obligations are important, it is a matter of regret that they are being portrayed as the main reason for changing. I really hope that on the day the Home minister and other senior politicians will have the courage to ask the States to equalise the age of consent because it is clearly the right thing to do. We shouldn’t need to be forced to act fairly.

In the final analysis this debate, despite its slightly embarrassing subject matter, is less about what age gays can have sex than about the dignity that is conferred by being treated equally with other citizens.