We should start seeing the term “Who self identify as Christian”, like how my local bird cage liner started referring to folks “Who self identify as Hispanic.”
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In my experience, most 16 year-olds do not have the maturity to avoid being manipulated by adults. There are of course exceptions, children wise beyond their years, but we cannot base laws on that. Everyone must be equal under the law, or the law itself is meaningless as a social contract.
An interesting litmus test. But I disagree. The physical capacity to commit a crime does not imply the wisdom, self-confidence or experience to avoid exploitation by adults.
I agree that if she broke a law forbidding her to have sex with her students, she should face the consequences. But that’s still a separate issue from the problems in how society legally defines age of consent that this case illustrates.
You cannot have a little sex and more than you can be a little pregnant. So society must decide whether to draw the line. Yes, some people mature faster than others. If we set it younger, many minors will be exploited by older more experienced adults. If we set it older, some minors who can navigate adult manipulations will nonetheless have to wait to give consent to older adults.
At the same time, we as a society are every bit as ignorant and blind when we ignore the reality that older kids are going to explore their sexuality with their peers. When we punish them for that, we’re no better than the older adults such as (allegedly) this woman who exploit them. Sometimes older kids and young adults are going to have willing sex, especially when they’re in the same school. It’s irrational and harmful to punish them for that, for we are in fact punishing them for not fitting our completely unrealistic expectations of when they’re going to become sexually active. Yet it is precisely because they do not have the same self-control and self-restraint we rightly expect of older adults, that allowing older adults to accept consent for sex from them is to allow those adults to exploit them.
Where should be draw the line? Based on the American youth I’ve known, I would probably set it no lower than 17, no higher than 18, with a five-year age difference required to be statutory rape (so a 21 year-old sleeping with a 17 year-old would not be statutory rape). I would also make statutory rape a misdemeanor under age 22, with no permanent record. Above age 22, I would make it a felony. Above age 25 I would make it grounds for inclusion on a sex offender registry, with the possibility if being taken off it, after any penalties are served, if a state-appointed psychiatrist deems the person no longer a threat.
Except for the fact that some US states set the age of consent at 16, my proposal is actually much less draconian than most of the current American laws. In most states any statutory rape will land the person convicted of it on a sex offender registry for life with no possibility for reform, even if that person is 16 and their partner is 15.
I accept that I don’t know enough about Australian youth to know where the age of consent should be, and it’s not for me to decide. It’s entirely possible that Australian youth are on average wiser, more mature and more experienced with navigating adult manipulation than American youth. Perhaps 16 makes the most sense in Australia.
But I do believe that these laws should be standardized throughout the United States, and that the current jigsaw of consent laws are dangerous, foolish and irresponsible for all involved.
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While I agree with the vast majority of your post, you’re just pulling numbers out of intuition again.
I think that we should fund a vast psychological survey. Like, participation in the millions. This survey will ask at what age the person first had sex, the age of the first partner, the nature of their relationship, etc., etc., and will then ask them questions about how they perceive sex, about their mental health, about all of the possible negative effects.
And then, once we have enough data, we can start forming conclusions about what the right age, right age gap, right relationship, etc. should be for statutory rape, and what the appropriate punishments should be.
Without robust scientific data to back up your recommendations, we can’t know if implementing your suggestions will make things better or worse.
My gut says “better,” but gut feelings should not be the basis for laws that will affect so many lives.
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I would say it’s even ridiculous to prosecute a 21 year old for sleeping with a 17 year old. For example, I began college shortly before I turned 17, and within a month of turning 17, I, legally an older child and emotionally in the process of becoming a young man, was in a relationship with a young woman who was 21 at the time. She had no idea, never asked my age, assumed I was over 18 because I was a freshman. Prosecuting her for statutory rape would have been completely absurd, but because we were in California where the age of consent is 18 and anyone over that can be prosecuted for anyone under that, she could have had her life and career ruined if someone had used the letter of the law to harass us. I didn’t know these things at the time, and didn’t knowingly endanger her, but the situation illustrates the absolute insanity of the current laws.
As for pornography, it’s flat-out Kafkaesque to punish someone for “exploiting” themselves, and the prosecutors who press such charges are worth less than the horse-shit I periodically dig out of my stable boots.
I think the basic idea of a sex offender registry could be a good thing, but that the way it’s used now, it’s exactly as useless and harmful as you say.
A lot of the political action groups that pushed for sex offender registries are highly resistant to admitting it’s failed to achieve the ends they said it would because it would mean admitting they were wrong about other things like demonizing sex workers and pushing abstinence-only sex education. As with the war on drugs, we’re all held hostage to those who won’t admit their mistake even as it harms the people they said they wanted to help.
That and anecdotal personal experience, but I actually agree completely with what you’re saying. I was just offering a counter-perspective to that of @zathras. In no way do I think my views should automatically become the law of the land, and I’d quickly emigrate from any country that began making laws that way, even if they were following my own recommendations.
My main point is that we need standardization and we need to develop rational age of consent laws that do punish older exploitative adults and don’t punish kids and young adults. Where we make those distinctions necessarily has to be a matter of consensus. Unfortunately, I don’t believe our current age of consent laws and sex offender registry laws are or ever were reflective of consensus. I believe they resulted from an puritanical and reality-denying alliance of special interests between the Religious Right and a small but vocal wing of anti-sex feminism (which did not and does not reflect the zeitgeist of feminism or its goals of women’s actual liberation, body-sovereignty and self-determination).
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Well ,what kind of world would we be living in if people just admitted when they made a mistake? It would be chaos, that’s what. A goddamn mess.
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Yup, you’re right, I was wrong.
waits for Armageddon…
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How do you feel about, say, a doctor sleeping with a 16 year old patient that he or she met in their practice as their doctor?
“Power over” relationships, especially in institutions where attendance is mandatory, mean that this isn’t the same as some 40 year old lady meeting a 16 year old teen at a park and them deciding to have sex (which is still illegal in most places but much less morally questionable).
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Where I grew up (Washington State) back in the day, age of consent laws looked at the ages of both parties. As I recall, below 16 was illegal if the other person was 18 or over. 16-18 was ok unless the other party was 21 or over. I could be misremembering. I remember people saying “16 will get your 20! hyuck hyuck!”
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Washington does still have an age differential under the age of consent, albeit with a seemingly unnessicarily complicated formula. Above 16 there does not appear to be a limit of the age differential allowed.
California allows for no age differential.
Texas, where I currently live, allows for a 3 year age differential.
A quick googling turned up this link. Somehow I don’t think Excel is the kind of spreadsheets kids are going to check before getting it on with each other.
It’s strange that California has some of the most draconian age of consent laws. I know it’s reputation for liberalism is a little exaggerated - I encountered plenty of Republicans and conservative Democrats during my residency there - but it is genuinely amazing to see it be more socially conservative than Texas on this one issue.
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Most Americans have no idea how conservative rural folks are along the west coast in all three states. It’s like f’ing Idaho out there.
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I’m kind of surprised to hear the European position on this. I can accept that a 16 year old can consent to sex with someone reasonably close in age to themselves. I feel it’s far too likely for a 16 year old in a sexual relationship with someone that much older than them to be coerced.
Where do those lines get drawn? I don’t know. But “Ok, you’ve hit [16/17], you can now have sex with someone literally 2-3x older than you” doesn’t feel right to me.
(Former protestant christian reporting in.) I could give you a theologically sound excuse. 
The disparity you’re seeing is between the Christian concepts of legalism and grace. In my experience, most folks switch easily between two extremes.
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The UK had until very recently, different ages of consent for heterosexual (16) and homosexual (18) sex.
Maybe the creepy rule (half your age plus 7) should be codified?
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To a lesser extent it’s the same in Texas. While we do have a somewhat deserved reputation for reactionary conservative policies, people in the cities (especially Austin and Houston) tend to be a lot less socially conservative than the still many many rural Texans. There are few places within either state that I would really want to live, and fortunately Austin is one of them. It’s a shame, because both California and Texas are absolutely beautiful places.
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An obsolete term for grooming?
- Corruption of minors.
(a) Offense defined.–
(1) (i) Except as provided in subparagraph (ii), whoever, being of the age of 18 years and upwards, by any act corrupts or tends to corrupt the morals of any minor less than 18 years of age, or who aids, abets, entices or encourages any such minor in the commission of any crime, or who knowingly assists or encourages such minor in violating his or her parole or any order of court, commits a misdemeanor of the first degree.
(ii) Whoever, being of the age of 18 years and upwards, by any course of conduct in violation of Chapter 31 (relating to sexual offenses) corrupts or tends to corrupt the morals of any minor less than 18 years of age, or who aids, abets, entices or encourages any such minor in the commission of an offense under Chapter 31 commits a felony of the third degree.
(2) Any person who knowingly aids, abets, entices or encourages a minor younger than 18 years of age to commit truancy commits a summary offense. Any person who violates this paragraph within one year of the date of a first conviction under this section commits a misdemeanor of the third degree. A conviction under this paragraph shall not, however, constitute a prohibition under section 6105 (relating to persons not to possess, use, manufacture, control, sell or transfer firearms).
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So they have a legitimate out and refuse to take it to maintain a social hierarchy based on perceived notions of purity?
Man that sounds exactly like the kind of prison you build yourself into.
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Not as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t share the theologically sound excuse, by the way. Getting into that would be a bit too far offtopic.
Have you been following the US presidential election? If having “the maturity to avoid being manipulated by adults” becomes the criterion, we’re in big trouble.
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Oh, actually. Anecdotal evidence, I have a female friend who is somewhat religious and was on Christian Mingle for a while.
Direct quote, “Holy shit the people on Christian Mingle are fucking freaks”.
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Yes, well, at some point you have to kick them out of the nest no matter how low they fall on the bell curve.
The only thing more dangerous than letting stupid people vote is only letting people who think they’re smart vote.
No reason it ought to. But it certainly shouldn’t be illegal in a liberal society.
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