The simple problem is Dio is confusing legality with morality. There’s a bright-line rule because there has to be one, legally, but sociologically it’s far, far murkier. I know people over 18 who are incapable of making informed and intelligent decisions for themselves and people under 18 who are way more savvy than I could ever be. You simply cannot point to a law (that isn’t even agreed upon within the US) as some objective measure of morality.
Quoth Diogenes:
So a government-issued photo ID doesn’t prove anything, but enrollment in college classes does? There’s a young lady here who started taking college classes at age 7. So, by the all-wise Diogenes’s standards, if I had sex with her when she was 7, I’d be off the hook, since hey, she’s a college student, she must be above the age of consent. Who’s the baby-raper now?
Disclaimer: I did not actually have sex with her, nor did I have any intention to. She’s 18 now, and I still don’t have any particular interest in having sex with her.
Oh, and as for the argument that it’s impossible for anyone below the age of consent to have sufficient emotional maturity to consent to sex, I think it’s quite remarkable that teens in some states are, across the board, emotionally two years behind their peers just a few miles across the border in another state.
Awww come one.
Every good physicist knows most problems are solved by a clever application of boundary conditions 
The thing I’m taking away from this is that Dio thinks nobody should sleep with anybody who doesn’t look to be in their late fifties, or possibly older. How off am I?
If someone is a “child” at 16, (in some states) how come they can be tried as an adult if they’re 12 years old and commit murder? It seems that in one case (sex) they can’t tell the difference between “right” and “wrong” yet, somehow the courts magically assume they know the difference between right and wrong if they commit murder? This aspect does not seem logically consistent to me.
So you admit that people hit puberty at all different times, but you can’t wrap your brain around the end result that different onsets for puberty means that people can easily appear to be much older than they actually are? :rolleyes:
If I were the signature-havin’ type… 
All you folks who’ve known people under 16 who could pass for 21 or older? You’re liars. Or retarded. Or retarded liars. **Dio **said so! And he can’t possibly be wrong!
Sure, just like I should be able to try to convince a jury that I didn’t really shoot my neighbor–it was my evil twin from another dimension. (You can tell 'cause she had a goatee.) What, you think there’s going to be a sudden rash of child rapists being set free because a panel of jurors is going to agree that a toddler could pass for 21? :rolleyes:
Everything addressed to you in this post.
Says the guy who has a doctor telling him that pre-teens could conceivably look 18. :rolleyes: Maybe we all threatened to expose **Qad **as a child-rapist if he didn’t make some shit up to support what we’re trying to tell you.
That’s the most honest, self-aware thing you’ve said all thread.
The only way to be sure, yes. And it *sounds *ridiculous because it *is *ridiculous. But that’s the degree of proof that someone like **Dio **appeared to be requiring.
People have a legal right to fuck anyone they damn well please (male or female, thanks, can we **please **stop making this all about adult men having sex with underage girls?), assuming both parties are capable of giving consent and do so. Someone who’s done their due diligence in ascertaining that their partner is of legal age **is **not and **should **not be required to get hugely involved in the other person’s life such that they can prove to a ridiculous degree that the person is the age they claim to be, assuming that the person hasn’t also roped a bunch of friends and family into the conspiracy.
So, let’s please move away from the puritanical moral discussions about “you wouldn’t have this problem if you’d just get to know each other better first.” We also wouldn’t have this problem if you could only legally fuck people you were married to and all marriages were arranged by parents. That doesn’t mean it’s a reasonable way to prevent statutory rape.
So I guess you break your speedometer every time you get a speeding ticket, too, huh? :rolleyes: Also: We’re not saying that ignorance is an excuse; we’re saying believing *reasonable evidence *is.
Assuming that someone is the age they appear to be, claim to be, and have a state-issued ID to prove they are isn’t stupid. Assuming otherwise is being paranoid.
Bingo.
In Wisconsin a bar isn’t held liable for serving and underage patron if the had provided an id showing them to be of legal age and as long as a reasonable person would believe that the id was genuine. No 15 year old white boy with the id of a 65 year old chinese woman kind of thing.
So if you aren’t going to hold a tavern responsible for possibly turning a impressionable young thing into a gutter dwelling alcoholic swilling mad dog out of a paper bag do you hold a person responsible for statutory rape even though they had the same reasonable belief that the person was of age?
Sorry–I thought you were talking to me, since it was my post that you were quoting. Feel free to carry on with the DtC bashing–I’ll try not to duck into the crossfire.
15-almost-16-year-old me is in this picture, far right.
Next to me is my grandmother, then my mother next to her. The rest of the people in the picture are aunts, an uncle, and cousins of mine.
If you saw me in a bar with my mom at that age, you may very well think we were sisters, not mother and daughter.
Whoo hoo! Lookin’ GOOD, Beady! 
I waited tables at 22. You would have gotten served by me.
I skipped a grade, so my peers in high school were all a year older than me.
My nickname, I shit you not, was “Jailbait.”
Well-deserved. Of course you will forgive if I wish my own daughter is never knowm by that nickname.
No doubt.
Having cellulite and stretchmarks by the 7th grade wasn’t all that awesome either.
It can always be worse. Consider for a moment “Hoover”. Jailbait sounds downright classy in comparision.
Calling someone a “slut” for being sex-positive is rather harsh.
Calling someone a “slut” for being so eager to hop in the sack that she’ll produce a fake ID and entrap someone into potential serious legal trouble is fair enough, however.
The existence of a bright-line standard does not require mindless adherence in all cases. For example, the “Romeo and Juliet” exception noted in several messages on this thread creates one exception without invalidating the general standard. There is no logical reason why the sort of deception scenario should not be another exception.
I really wonder how Dio has any time to participate in this threat when he obviously spends most of his time in a rye field trying to catch kids from going over a cliff.
It’s not entrapment.
That’s only when I’m not trying to figure out where the fuck all those ducks go in the winter.
OK, I just ran across this thread, and I’m not going to read through all 200+ posts. However, in perusing the last page, it does not appear that anyone has brought up that ignorance of age can be a legal defense. If this has already been covered I apologize.
In Indiana, the offense of a person over 18 having sex with someone who is over 14 but under 16 is called Sexual Misconduct with a Minor. It is covered in I.C. 35-42-4-9.
I have seen one case in my career where I thought this defense should have been raised. Guy is home from college for Christmas break and meets up with some high school friends. They pick him up in a car driven by a girl he doesn’t know. They go to a party where he ends up banging the girl who was driving the car. Turns out she is actually 15 and was driving the car illegally. The girl’s cousins catch them in the act and beat the living shit out of the guy.
Seems to me that he could have made a good case that he reasonably believed she was 16 based on her driving a car. But he was scared to try it because the consequences of losing would have been pretty severe. He got a pretty good plea deal that allowed him to plead to a misdemeanor and kept him from having to register as a sex offender so he took it.