Really? You’ve never heard of a Lolita teacher/student case where the student (and teacher) insisted all the way through trial and beyond that they are in luuuuuurve?
Come on. That may or may not be what happened here, but that kind of power imbalance makes it quite easy to manipulate someone young and inexperienced that THIS IS LOVE and THE GROWN-UPS JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND! Especially given that teenagers in general are prone to digging their heels in when they’re in opposition to what their parents want.
I think homosexual relations are morally wrong, but I also think it’s ridiculous for the law to be involved in this case. Especially since there’s no risk of pregnancy.
Those changes are individual, tho. I’ve known 13yos who were the adult in their household (despite several legal adults being present) and 23yos who couldn’t boil pasta and add precooked sauce.
BTW, I like how the charge is “lewd and lascivious battery” - the Victorian-era language ought to give these legislators a clue as to how outdated their sexual mores are…
A few years ago I read a little news blurb in an insurance industry journal. It said psychologists [and/or neurologists] had completed research that corroborates the insurance industry’s practice of setting high premiums on liability and damage coverage for vehicles driven by persons under 25 years of age. The insurance industry often ‘gives drivers a break’ when they turn 25 (older, for males) based on decades of statistical evidence showing that drivers 25 and older tend to be involved in fewer collisions than drivers aged 16 to 24. There’s a whole lot of social side-effect cited as key influences in that ‘mellow-out’ break-point, but the neurologists and psychologists had also shown that the human brain doesn’t stop developing until about age 25* and the parts that form the Freudian Super-ego – the parts that resist peer pressure, dampen thrill-seeking, temper oppositional-defiance, and basically smooth out emotional spikes – are developed LAST and these developments tend to help people steer away from racing, running red lights, showing off, and the kinds of vehicular shenanigans we tend to stereotype teen-aged drivers for.
So, based on that science, I suggests the universal age-of-consent should be set at 25 – old enough to resist showing off, peer pressure, defiance of authority, etcetera.
Now turn down that noisy racket and get off my lawn!
[Who the hell is Dvorzhak anyway? Can’t even spell his own name right…]
—G!
*This is also precisely why so many zillions of dollars are thrown into advertising to this age group. Advertising that relies on sex-appeal (thrills and emotion), extreme sports (thrills) appeal, bandwagon arguments (peer pressure), be different/better (oppositional defiance) arguments, and so on.