I picked 18. I’d like them to at least be out of high school when they have that first kid.
- You can’t sign a cell phone contract at 18 but you’re allowed to legally procreate?
And on the 3 year difference : you think it’s Ok for a 16 year old to be having sex with a 13 year old? Or 12 and 15? <shudder>
This is my thought as well; put the AoC around 16, but make exceptions when both parties are adolescents.
So far as I know all procreation is legal in that nobody can be forced to have an abortion. 10 year olds have given birth in this country, and there are millions of people in the U.S. who either gave procreated at 18 or under or are the offspring of someone who did.
I don’t view it okay as in “If it were my daughter I’d have no problem with it” but I don’t view it as rape or molestation the same way I would if it were a 21 year old and a 12 year old (providing, again, that there’s no coercion and neither is retarded or other extenuating circumstances).
I would like to know what creepy peado said ‘younger than 13’.
From a legal standpoint, you can sign forms of consent for a child if you are a minor and their parent but can’t enter a contract yet.
I don’t believe it’s proper to allow for 13 year olds to make those decisions. They don’t have the mental capacity to ‘give consent’ to such things.
Interesting stats: the number of teenaged mothers has decreased steadily and significantly for the past two decades. In 1990 there were 183,000+ children born to mothers aged 15-17; in 2009 that was down to 124,000+. Births to 18-19 year olds decreased from 338,000+ in 1990 to 285,000+ in 2009. Cite. I wonder if it’s due to more teenagers being on birth control.
16 but with an excemption if they are within 4 years of each other.
It would be squicky if my hypothetical 15 year old daughter told me she was active with a 19 year old, but he doesn’t deserve to go to prison for it. Some people are late developers.
So do you think that two thirteen year olds have sex, neither forcing the other one and one of whom is two months older than the other one, that the one who is two months older should be charged with rape?
On a different topic, some countries have different ages of consent for gay sex IIRC. Male gay sex anyway; female may be different. They’re usually a year or two higher.
I have no problem with 18, and a two-year “Romeo and Juliet” exception.
In practice, the nature of sexuality means that statutory rape laws only can be enforced if the sex is already causing some kind of trouble. Two happy sixteen year olds boinking with their parents implicit permission (which does happen) are never going to get in trouble. Unless your parents are really strict, you are not going to get in trouble for banging your date after the prom. What people get in trouble for is doing shady stuff to people much younger than themselves, and statutory rape laws are one good way to make legal consequences for things that may be difficult to prosecute directly.
18 + a Romeo & Juliet exception would be best in my opinion.
I was 17 almost 18 when I had sex with my girlfriend who at the time had just turned 15 a few days before. Of course at the time I thought that it was okay and those saying that AOC should be 17 or higher were idiots.
How time and circumstance changes one’s opinion. I am now the father of two girls, both entering their teen years. Being a father has changed my view on AOC considerably. Don’t touch my daughters you pervs … when they are 17 or 18, it’s their choice, but looking back on it now my 15 year old girlfriend was just a kid and I don’t think that she (or I for that matter) thought things all the way through. Also, she was someone else’s daughter.
I think your views on something like this will be very dependent on if you are the ones wanting to have sex or the parents of those wanting to have sex. I mean, it is only natural for us to want to protect our children. And I think it is also natural that our protection level is higher for our daughters than our sons.
In 50 years I’ve lived under AoC=14 and under AoC=16 in the same jurisdiction and I don’t think we saw a change in quality of life indicators upon the upgrade, FWIW. So I can say I, and society, could live with it being 14 or 16, 'cause I did see it be so.
I’d think it very reasonable to keep full AoC at 16, and then throw in a graduated(*) R&J window to try and deal reasonably with the younger adolescents.
(*The R/J rule is not about it “being OK with me if a 13 and 15 year old have sex”, it’s about, as Sampiro and others have said, not ruining two young persons’ lives if what happened was a dumb mistake, not a criminal assault. So I can see a scenario where the R/J rule may not be a one-size-fits-all X-year-difference rule but rather gets gradations as a function of both age of the parties and age difference)
(And look, you KNOW there’s going to be a few contrarians aboard who will go for “under 13” in the poll just to get under your skins…)
Laws should remain in place on child sexual abuse, with explicit detailing of specifics so as to not prosecute teenagers fooling around with each other.
But age of consent should be eliminated from the law books, and instead education and freedom should be encouraged. Properly informed people, with the taboo nature of sex eliminated, would make for a safer and fairer sexual environment.
At least, it works that successfully in my imaginary Utopia.
I think majority age should be 16, for all purposes, not just the age of sexual consent. There are probably a lot of 16 year olds now who aren’t capable of assuming responsibility for their own actions, but that is due to a lifetime (for them) of being told they have no responsibilities until they reach age 18, or older.
Could people explain why they think the age difference is so important? I know that on a visceral level we are all bothered by the idea of a 50 year old man with a 15 year old girl, when we wouldn’t be as bothered by the idea of an 18 year old man with a 15 year old girl. But, on an intellectual level, where exactly does the trouble lie?
Is it solely the fact that the older man is “taking advantage” of his “position of power”?
This can happen among fully legal adults too (there are so many different kinds of power and so many situations where an unequal power balance could result in a sexual relationship.) Why should it only be illegal if the power differential is based on age?
Can someone provide a better answer to why it is always wrong for a middle aged adult man to be sexual with a teenage girl, other than “it’s creepy”?
I don’t think so to be honest. Although I’d probably disapprove of it and think it highly bizzare it is not impossible for there to be a true romantic relationship between almost any age range. However this doesn’t mean teenagers (well younger teenagers) who aren’t fully developed yet intellectually.
Spain is considering raising it to 16; I voted 15 because that’s the age at which my cohort wouldn’t have freaked out if someone was “doing it”.
The 16 makes sense in that it’s also the age at which you can start working full-time and the age at which compulsory education ends, but I’m not sure it makes actual social sense.
Note that Spanish legal definitions can see something as “statutory rape” when the two people were above the age of consent and hale of mind: it’s a matter of having power over the other person, not so much of lines on the calendar.
I’m guessing people have gone for the ages they actually have AOC for in their area, and I suppose I’m going to do the same. The UK has 16 as the AOC for everyone, gay or straight, and it seems to serve us well enough. One incongruity there is that you can have sex at 16, but you can’t watch porn until you’re 18, so you can have sex but not see someone else having it. Weird huh?
Seventeen is probably as good a place as any to start.
I think sometimes that sixteen is low, because me and my friends were still a tiny bit stupid sometimes. I also think the age to get married should be raised to 20 it seems to be a good idea to discourage early marriages.