This is exactly why I hate alcohol laws that most places have on the books. They’re relics of the Prohibition, and most of them are fundamentally stupid and out of touch with reality. The simple fact is, teenagers drink, and they do it a lot. I have only ever met one person who cared about what the legal age was when he started drinking(well, after the age of 15 or so), and he is probably the most uptight, overwrought guy I know. Everybody else I have any knowledge of the drinking habits of either started underage or hasn’t had a drink even after becoming legal. Drinking age laws are a farce at the best of times.
As for hosting parties with alcohol, would you prefer to have parents there when these kids start drinking or to have parents not there? I’d agree that it’d be rather disconcerting if the parents are feeding booze to like 12 year olds, but when the kids are 17 or 18(or, for some ungodly reason, 20 and still illegal) it’s not an issue to anyone with half a brain. An 18 year old is old enough to decide whether or not to have a couple beers, so long as society doesn’t repress alcohol knowledge to the point where they don’t realize that it’s unwise to have 20 on your first time out.
As for the bit about the law being the law, it is, and these parents are technically committing a crime. That doesn’t change the fact that they’re not in the wrong – the law and morality often differ strikingly. My sympathy doesn’t go away because these parents are being tried for an unjust law, my disdain for said unjust law merely increases.
And the line about what happens when you give teens “a little leeway” is paternalism of the worst sort. I know just as many adults who get wasted, engage in sexual activity(gasp!), and get into myriad problems of other varieties when you give them leeway as well. It doesn’t mean that they need to be kept on a short leash, it means that we need to acknowledge the fundamental nature of the right to be an idiot – without that one, all the rest just exist with somebody else’s permission.
