# Age of consent laws should be reformed **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 4, 2013, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995 "2013-09-04T14:28:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/61 "2013-11-01T03:30:42Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Whatever the age - I do think that teenage pregnancy is an inherently bad thing. They may be ready for sex, but they are not ready to bear and rear a child, financially or in any other way. Why should I, as a taxpayer, pay the costs of rearing someone else’s child. For the same reason you have to pay the cost of educating someone else’s child in a public school? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_stamos_left_ear/32/3198_2.png) [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Stamos_Left_Ear)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/62 "2013-11-01T08:57:39Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > However, this example is an extreme outlier, I think. If a minor is sexually active with adults, it’s vastly more likely that she would be a 15 yo in love with some attractive 20 yo than a 13 yo blowing every single male she meets. I don’t think that general policy should be based on extreme cases. Neither situation is acceptable. Stop fucking children. ---
**Author:** ![DevilMayhem666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/258eb7/32.png) [@DevilMayhem666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DevilMayhem666)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/63 "2013-11-01T12:32:08Z")
> [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](#): > > Neither situation is acceptable. Stop fucking children. Medically speaking, children are those who have not reached puberty. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/64 "2013-11-01T16:24:41Z")
> [@DevilMayhem666](#): > > Medically speaking, children are those who have not reached puberty. However, conditionalizing statutory rape laws on a case by case evaluation of the child’s physical and emotional maturity would be politically untenable and, honestly, downright frightening. Are we going to pass out “sex licenses” to kids once they pass physical maturity examinations (yep, you’re physically mature enough) and mental maturity evaluations (“Yep, you scored at least 80% on the State Department of Love’s Sex Knowledge Test, and your doctor signed off that your personality test results came back within 5% of ‘normal’ and have no current sexual disorder diagnosis, so here’s your license. Don’t blow the entire State U football team please, we might reopen your maturity case for ‘poor judgment’ if you do that. Have fun \<3.”). Or is the onus of performing the maturity evaluation going to be on the adult and they proceed at their peril? This would be truly frightening to the wannabe adult lover. Sure, lots of people make educated decisions to figure out how hard they are going to study the tax laws before filing a return, knowing that if they made a mistake and accidentally mischaracterized income that the penalties will not be severe. If adults have to take the risk that their own evaluation of the maturity of a child will be contradicted by the testimony of the prosecution and that they will be sentenced to register as a sex offender for the rest of their life, that’s not a risk I would consider reasonable. Are we going to say that good-faith miscalculations of a child’s maturity should be deemed minor offenses not worthy of sex offender registration, and one only becomes a “sex offender” by making entirely unreasonable or absurd conclusions about the maturity of a child that anyone with half an ounce of sense would have concluded was immature? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/65 "2013-11-01T20:34:12Z")
> [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](#): > > Neither situation is acceptable. Stop fucking children. You think that a 20 yo having sex with a 15 yo is quite similar to a 40 yo having sex with a 13 yo? And 15 yo aren’t children. ETA : FTR, anybody can fuck a 15 yo over here, and in many other countries, and I’m not aware of any outrage over this issue. So, it seems that quite a lot of people deems it acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/66 "2013-11-01T21:19:18Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Are we going to pass out “sex licenses” to kids once they pass physical maturity examinations (yep, you’re physically mature enough) and mental maturity evaluations (“Yep, you scored at least 80% on the State Department of Love’s Sex Knowledge Test, and your doctor signed off that your personality test results came back within 5% of ‘normal’ and have no current sexual disorder diagnosis, so here’s your license. Don’t blow the entire State U football team please, we might reopen your maturity case for ‘poor judgment’ if you do that. Have fun \<3.”). > > Or is the onus of performing the maturity evaluation going to be on the adult and they proceed at their peril? This would be truly frightening to the wannabe adult lover. Your parenthetical parody was awesome and hilarious. On the question you asked, though, isn’t this already the case? In my state the age of consent is 17. I submit that there are many 16-year-old girls who could pass for 21 easily. (This is less true for boys/men.) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_stamos_left_ear/32/3198_2.png) [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Stamos_Left_Ear)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/67 "2013-11-02T00:17:39Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > You think that a 20 yo having sex with a 15 yo is quite similar to a 40 yo having sex with a 13 yo? > > And 15 yo aren’t children. > > ETA : FTR, anybody can fuck a 15 yo over here, and in many other countries, and I’m not aware of any outrage over this issue. So, it seems that quite a lot of people deems it acceptable. People who are adults should quit fucking children. Yes, there are degrees of wrong things. That doesn’t mean that less wrong things are not wrong. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2013, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/68 "2013-11-02T04:01:29Z")
You say that as though there is a universally agreed upon bright line separating “adults” and “children”. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_stamos_left_ear/32/3198_2.png) [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Stamos_Left_Ear)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2013, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/69 "2013-11-02T04:42:38Z")
a sophomore in college should not be fucking a freshman in high school. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2013, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/70 "2013-11-02T05:03:18Z")
How about a freshman in college and a junior in high school? ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/71 "2013-11-02T17:15:20Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Your parenthetical parody was awesome and hilarious. On the question you asked, though, isn’t this already the case? In my state the age of consent is 17. I submit that there are many 16-year-old girls who could pass for 21 easily. (This is less true for boys/men.) Thanks. As to the question, I think you’re misunderstanding a little bit. The intent of the two options (the license one and the one in the second part) was to consider a reform of age of consent laws to redefine them. Instead of it being illegal for an adult to have sex with a person below a certain age (either absolutely or depending on their own age) because the law defines inability to consent in an objective, age based way, the law would be changed so that it is illegal to have sex with someone who is _too immature to consent based on an evaluation of all the facts and circumstances_. The question was whether the law would provide a vehicle to perform the maturity evaluation in advance to provide confidence that any specific tryst has been pre-cleared, or whether or not people have to make their own judgment call on their beloved’s maturity level before getting into bed, and if the government later can introduce evidence that the maturity was misjudged, welcome to the world of sex offender registration because you mistook the real, immature 15 year old Suzie for an emotionally and physically mature 15 year old Suzie. Such a law would _still_ protect children and teens who are really and truly-o unable to understand sex or fully consent to it, as having sex with them would still be treated as abuse. It would, however, provide an “out” to allow underage people to consent to sex in cases where they really do understand and appreciate the risks and benefits and are not being coerced as it would look at the facts and circumstances to distinguish abusive age-discrepancy sex from non-abusive age-discrepancy sex. This could help eliminate prison time for Romeo and Juliet type situations. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2013, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/72 "2013-11-02T22:33:02Z")
I just meant about the “terrifying” part. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/73 "2013-11-10T00:25:14Z")
I hope this isn’t considered too much of a tangent, but have any of you been following the Bob Messer-Emily Lalinsky case in Michigan? Messer, who is 37, ran off with a 15-year-old girl. They were found a couple of days later and the guy is in jail. A recent update on the case is [here](http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2013/11/live_blog_court_hearing_for_37.html). Most of the comments on the news stories have been variations on “ugh, lock up that disgusting pervert and throw away the key,” but a few cynics have pointed out that the age of consent in Michigan is 16, so why didn’t the guy just wait a year? It also occurred to me that the girl probably has some serious psychological issues to be attracted to a guy more than twice her age, and those issues wouldn’t have magically evaporated when she turned 16. A surprising aspect of the case is that Messer was very active on various social networking sites (particularly Tumblr and Instagram) and his accounts are all still publicly accessible. It’s immediately obvious from glancing through them that the relationship had been going on for a long time, possibly years. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/74 "2013-11-12T06:27:20Z")
> [@steveroo](#): > > Most of the comments on the news stories have been variations on “ugh, lock up that disgusting pervert and throw away the key,” but a few cynics have pointed out that the age of consent in Michigan is 16, so why didn’t the guy just wait a year? If she’s fifteen, it’s something under a year. Any idea how close she is/was to turning 16? ---
**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/75 "2013-11-12T06:57:31Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > You say that as though there is a universally agreed upon bright line separating “adults” and “children”. There is, at least for legal purposes… The “bright line” is 18 and this is affirmed in a number of international instruments, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by an overwhelming majority of nations, with about two exceptions. (Somalia, USA). ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/76 "2013-11-12T09:38:38Z")
As you note, the USA is not one of them. Besides, that 18 age is clearly not the be-all, end-all. Legal age of consent is not 18 in many nations (isn’t it, like, 12 in the Netherlands?). And of course the age to legally drink in the U.S. is 21; hard to say someone is a full adult if they are not allowed to buy alcohol or enter a bar solely because they are too young. Also, in the flip direction from sexual consent, most people turn 18 while they are still in high school. It’s not commonly thought that we have any schools that mix adults and children as students together, much less thousands of them across the country. ---
**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/77 "2013-11-12T13:03:49Z")
Merely pointing out that there is for a legal purposes, there is a widely accepted legal definition of child. Age of consent is 16 in the Netherlands. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/78 "2013-11-12T13:15:32Z")
Maybe it is different where you live, but around here one does not hear 17-year-olds being described as children or individually as “a child”. Which reminds me of some other ages of passage: 16-year-old age in most states to be able to get a drivers license, the 15-year-old age for a learners permit, and the 17-year-old age to go see an R-rated movie without one’s parents. ---
**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/79 "2013-11-12T13:23:02Z")
Missed edit window. A quick Google shows that the overwhelming majority of countries set age of majority at 18. Including America, with the exception of one or two states. The fact that there is a prohibition on alcohol consumption does not limit this. Of course, the age of consent in those nations that have an age of consent (not all do, many Islamic countries have an age of marriage, all premarital sex being illegal) varies widely and bears no direct relation to the age of majority. ---
**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995/80 "2013-11-12T13:29:01Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Maybe it is different where you live, but around here one does not hear 17-year-olds being described as children or individually as “a child”. Not in informal conversation, no. Legally, they are. Here and in America. > [@](#): > > Which reminds me of some other ages of passage: 16-year-old age in most states to be able to get a drivers license, the 15-year-old age for a learners permit, and the 17-year-old age to go see an R-rated movie without one’s parents. Yes, children acquire rights and privileges in stages in many jurisdictions. I’m not sure where you are going with this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/age-of-consent-laws-should-be-reformed/667995.md?page=5)