Presenting a fake ID with deceptive intent is a crime on the part of someone other than the person who did it? 
True he did borrow someone else’s ID, but the DMV clerk was the one that failed to spot the difference. He did not walk away with an ID with someone else’s photo on it; he walked away with an ID with someone else’s name on it. It’s not that hard to do (or at least it wasn’t back in 2002). The ID itself was not fake; it was real, just obtained through fraud. My point it’s entirely possible for someone to have a read ID with their own actual photo on it; just with someone elses name/birthdate. Of course to the best of my knowledge all my friend did was use the ID to buy booze or get into clubs; not trick some irresponsible female pervert into raping a little boy of 16.
We have far more corroboration for Barack Obama’s birth place than his driver’s license.
Fucking children is a crime even if the child had a fake ID. The child may have also committed a separate misdemeanor, but the rapist is not a victim of anything.
Good catch, my wording at the beginning of the post wasn’t great. I wasn’t trying to say that you can’t put a number on an age of consent. There is a number and that is fine. What I was trying to say is relevant is the person’s emotional maturity. The jury is there to decide if the person’s emotional maturity(as well as possible evidence and physical features) are of a level to fool an adult into thinking they are the age of consent. The part about not putting a number on it meant that you can’t take every 15 year old and say that their emotional maturity level is that of a 15 year old. Some will be much more advanced and some will be far behind. All in all, it wasn’t strictly a reply to your post, I kind of took the last line out of context. I apologize, but the point I was making still stands. I was excited, that’s all. Your silliness has knocked my emotional maturity level down to that of a 17 year old, or maybe an 18 year old. It’s hard to tell.
Once you start down the path of “it might be fake, so it should be dismissed out of hand” (as opposed to “it might be fake, but if it appears real under reasonable scrutiny it may be treated as such for the time being”), you quickly end up in a place where there is no reliable evidence that there is such a person as Barack Obama, much less reliable evidence of where he was born.
Dio, I have about a million responses for you, but I’m going to take the very good advice and just step the hell back, because as far as I can tell you aren’t interested in actually discussing anything. You have formed an opinion about the way things work, and you are going to refuse to accept the validity of any evidence that contradicts your personal version of reality. Enjoy willful ignorance.
I’m already down to about 30 percent serious, 70 percent mock* myself.
*being careful to mock the ideas rather than the person, of course
How about false advertising or perhaps jailbait and switch?
Please state what would be “really trying” with regard to verifying the identity of the individuaul in question, in order to avoid your “going through the motions” accusation. I’m curious, since you’ve already set the bar for personal identification at least as high as is required for a military high security clearance.
Scenario. You meet a woman at a bar in a college town. She looks about 28 to you, but there’s still a chance that she’s 17. Theorically speaking. So, you ask her for ID. She shows a driver’s liscence that says she 24. Now more nervous about your age-identifying qualifications, you ask to see her birth certificate - which she happens to be carrying. It too says she’s 24. You ask to see her social security card, and decode the number to find it too agrees that she’s 24. (That’s possible, right?) You ask her if she’s in college, and she says she’s in graduate school, producing a notarized copy of her college transcript that she happens to have on hand. It’s consistent with what you might expect of a 24 year old.
Now, let’s take a moment to note that according to you we still aren’t “really trying” to establish her age. All the evidence you’ve seen so far is documentary evidence. And if the woman is a 17-year old government spy, then it could indeed all be faked.
So. You ask her if she has any friends in the area to corroborate her age, but she says no, not that are around. You ask her about her parents, and she says they live in another city, four time zones over, where it’s 4AM, and no she’s not going to call them.
So. In this situation, what can you do to “really try”?
Well, obviously you could design a time machine and go back to the moment of her birth. Then put your machine on fast forward and watch her grow up just to make sure it *really is *her.
Of course if you’re not prepared to do that, you obviously don’t like her enough to have sex with her.
Here, I think, we get to the heart of the matter – setting the bar high enough to create a de facto prohibition on one-night stands. The actual details are secondary, much like the actual details of requiring waiting periods, ultrasound scans, etc before a woman can get an abortion.
You know, SA, I rarely agree with you. Okay, I *never *agree with you.
Until now. All three of those things are just flat-out wrong, in my book.
Even a broken watch is right twice a day.
Before you saw completely through the branch you’re standing on, Dio, may I observe that nobody save you thinks that anbyone is defending the raping of children.
Rather, what is being suggested is that if someone encounters a willing sex partner in a situation where (s)he is reasonably presumed to be of age to consent, and applies due diligence to assuring him/herself that (s)he is of age, the (eventually discovered) fact that (s)he was actually under age and deceiving him/her should be an affirmative defense to statutory rape.
Presuming a guy picking up a girl to avoid the pronoun problems: He is not a man fucking a little girl. He is a young adult entering into a sexual liaison with what he reasonably believes to be another young adult, legally and consensually. That she deceived him as to her true age should not be grounds for him to be prosecuted. (I think most people arguing this view explicitly or tacitly added, or would agree to add, a safeguard expecting some reasonable level of due diligence on his part, so that it does not turn into a “get out of jail free” card.)
Yes, a ten year old is not a 15 year old. You’ve made that point repeatedly and clearly.
But if an 19-year-old is to feel prohibited from having sex with what he reasonably believes to be an 18-year-old, even if she is in actuality only 16, or in the case I noted earlier, a 16-year-old boy being offered sex willingly by a girl who can ‘prove’ she’s 15 – even though she’s actually 13. Do you not see a bit of injustice in insisting that the guy “should have known” in these cases?
Me, too. Isn’t that scary? 
Good post, Starving Artist! May we see many more like this one! 
And if its so broken its actually running backwards more often than that.
In the interest of factual analysis, let’s shift the subject off sex.
I don’t know if it’s federal or state law, but I do know store employees can lose their jobs selling alcohol and tobacco to minors. I can’t do in-depth research at work, but is there any precedent for a worker being fired (or not being fired) for selling to a minor who had a very good fake ID and looked reasonably 21+?
I just wanted to correct you. It’s the Muslim Socialist Kenyan Usurper, mind you.
Being fired or not I’m not sure, but someone posted a reference upthread to a law in Wisconsin (was it?) that says that vendors are not liable if they sell to a minor who produces a fake ID. If the establishment isn’t in trouble with the law, ISTM that most managers wouldn’t look to pursue it further.
Here’s a link to Wisconsin law: http://www.revenue.wi.gov/faqs/ise/atundrg.html
So the law tells bars to check ID to verify that someone’s of drinking age. It stands to reason that a reasonable person performing due diligence would do the same to verify that someone isn’t jailbat.
(Oh, and people are still arguing with Dio? Huh.)