Should the age of consent be raised to 20?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'd support an "absolute" age of consent around 25, with consent for lower ages being based on age ranges (say, 1 year for 15-year-olds, 2 years for people aged 16 or 17, 3 years for people aged 18-20, and 5 years for people aged 21-24).

[H. Ross Peron]

I'd support an "absolute" age of consent around 25, with consent for lower ages being based on age ranges (say, 1 year for 15-year-olds, 2 years for people aged 16 or 17, 3 years for people aged 18-20, and 5 years for people aged 21-24).

I dont think this is particularly enforceable. You are suggesting for example high school seniors who date sophomores would be violating the law as would college undergraduates who are in relationships with grad students. Plenty of people marry before they are 25. I'm guessing this is based on brain development but by this reasoning there probably should be a maximum age of consent so that you dont have 50 year olds marrying 80 year old widows to inherit their fortune or whatever.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'd support an "absolute" age of consent around 25, with consent for lower ages being based on age ranges (say, 1 year for 15-year-olds, 2 years for people aged 16 or 17, 3 years for people aged 18-20, and 5 years for people aged 21-24).

I dont think this is particularly enforceable. You are suggesting for example high school seniors who date sophomores would be violating the law as would college undergraduates who are in relationships with grad students. Plenty of people marry before they are 25. I'm guessing this is based on brain development but by this reasoning there probably should be a maximum age of consent so that you dont have 50 year olds marrying 80 year old widows to inherit their fortune or whatever.

I'm open to tweaking the numbers around a bit (and this definitely is the kind of policy where I'd want the input of developmental psychologists) but I think the overall principle is sound. Tbh having been a grad student very recently, the idea of dating an undergrad seemed absolutely beyond the pale to me (especially given that grad students are also usually TAs, the potential for toxic power dynamics is huge). I don't see why that's something we'd want the law to protect.

[Horus]

I'd support an "absolute" age of consent around 25, with consent for lower ages being based on age ranges (say, 1 year for 15-year-olds, 2 years for people aged 16 or 17, 3 years for people aged 18-20, and 5 years for people aged 21-24).

This is an extremely invasive and disturbing pov. Seriously, wtf is wrong with you?

My parents have a seven year age gap. When they met, my mom was 21 and dad 28. They've been together for 45 years and married for 40. Their relationship is incredibly healthy and equitable. But in your world my father would've been taken away by cops and labeled a sex offender. Nice.

[Donerail]

The vast majority of ~23-25 y/os dating people in the 19-22 range are not graduate students. Seems odd to base policy on the potential for "toxic power dynamics" among a very small minority of people who would be affected by this law, especially since university policy often already addresses that specific scenario.

[Aurelius]

Some people on this forum are such prudes it's incredible. Thank God none of you will ever be anywhere near the levers of public policy.

[beesley]

Some people on this forum are such prudes it's incredible. Thank God none of you will ever be anywhere near the levers of public policy.

Agreed. Maybe they should just try it for themselves.

[Big Abraham]

Some people on this forum are such prudes it's incredible. Thank God none of you will ever be anywhere near the levers of public policy.

Agreed. Maybe they should just try it for themselves.

Lol. I almost wanted to say this earlier but it felt mean

Then again, this is Atlas we're talking about, which makes every single one of us at least honorary virgins.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'd support an "absolute" age of consent around 25, with consent for lower ages being based on age ranges (say, 1 year for 15-year-olds, 2 years for people aged 16 or 17, 3 years for people aged 18-20, and 5 years for people aged 21-24).

Wow. Per this standard I was almost a statutory rapist myself, my ex who posted here turned 25 less than a month before our first date and I was 32.

You're saying if I met her two months earlier I should've been charged with a felony?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Some people on this forum are such prudes it's incredible. Thank God none of you will ever be anywhere near the levers of public policy.

The Conservative position should be to encourage people not to have sex before they get married. They should also return to advocating for abstinence only education

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'd support an "absolute" age of consent around 25, with consent for lower ages being based on age ranges (say, 1 year for 15-year-olds, 2 years for people aged 16 or 17, 3 years for people aged 18-20, and 5 years for people aged 21-24).

I dont think this is particularly enforceable. You are suggesting for example high school seniors who date sophomores would be violating the law as would college undergraduates who are in relationships with grad students. Plenty of people marry before they are 25. I'm guessing this is based on brain development but by this reasoning there probably should be a maximum age of consent so that you dont have 50 year olds marrying 80 year old widows to inherit their fortune or whatever.

I'm open to tweaking the numbers around a bit (and this definitely is the kind of policy where I'd want the input of developmental psychologists) but I think the overall principle is sound. Tbh having been a grad student very recently, the idea of dating an undergrad seemed absolutely beyond the pale to me (especially given that grad students are also usually TAs, the potential for toxic power dynamics is huge). I don't see why that's something we'd want the law to protect.

But that's the sort of situation that we have rules about abuse of power for. If the undergrad is himself or herself older than twenty-five (which does happen; one of my cohort at UMass was an Air Force guy six or seven years older than us who decided to major in Japanese after his discharge because he fell in love with the culture while stationed at Misawa), that doesn't somehow "solve" the situation, nor does the grad student being younger than twenty-five (as both you and I were, at least initially!).

I'm willing to entertain arguments for graduated ages of consent going up to twenty or so, i.e. the initial thread question, but extending that up to twenty-five goes completely out of the range of what's reasonable even from a perspective like mine that is not particularly concerned with sexual freedom for its own sake. Most people these days in their early twenties who are sleeping with significantly older people probably have something psychosexually concerning going on, but that doesn't in and of itself justify prosecuting their partners as sex criminals.

Some people on this forum are such prudes it's incredible. Thank God none of you will ever be anywhere near the levers of public policy.

The Conservative position should be to encourage people not to have sex before they get married. They should also return to advocating for abstinence only education

The key word here is "encourage", OSR. The age of consent is a law, not a guideline or a recommendation. This isn't the Pirate Code here.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Some people on this forum are such prudes it's incredible. Thank God none of you will ever be anywhere near the levers of public policy.

The Conservative position should be to encourage people not to have sex before they get married. They should also return to advocating for abstinence only education

The key word here is "encourage", OSR. The age of consent is a law, not a guideline or a recommendation. This isn't the Pirate Code here.

Yes I agree with you that we should should not make pre-marital sex illegal and I even posted that I disagree with raising the legal age to 20.

I do favor things such as abstinence only education though

[H. Ross Peron]

Some people on this forum are such prudes it's incredible. Thank God none of you will ever be anywhere near the levers of public policy.

The Conservative position should be to encourage people not to have sex before they get married. They should also return to advocating for abstinence only education

The key word here is "encourage", OSR. The age of consent is a law, not a guideline or a recommendation. This isn't the Pirate Code here.

Yes I agree with you that we should should not make pre-marital sex illegal and I even posted that I disagree with raising the legal age to 20.

I do favor things such as abstinence only education though

I could see a case for encouraging abstinence but totally excluding knowledge of birth control and safe sex techniques is a bad idea.

[Sestak]

I'd support an "absolute" age of consent around 25, with consent for lower ages being based on age ranges (say, 1 year for 15-year-olds, 2 years for people aged 16 or 17, 3 years for people aged 18-20, and 5 years for people aged 21-24).

I dont think this is particularly enforceable. You are suggesting for example high school seniors who date sophomores would be violating the law as would college undergraduates who are in relationships with grad students. Plenty of people marry before they are 25. I'm guessing this is based on brain development but by this reasoning there probably should be a maximum age of consent so that you dont have 50 year olds marrying 80 year old widows to inherit their fortune or whatever.

I'm open to tweaking the numbers around a bit (and this definitely is the kind of policy where I'd want the input of developmental psychologists) but I think the overall principle is sound. Tbh having been a grad student very recently, the idea of dating an undergrad seemed absolutely beyond the pale to me (especially given that grad students are also usually TAs, the potential for toxic power dynamics is huge). I don't see why that's something we'd want the law to protect.

In what university are grad students allowed to pursue relationships with undergraduates who they directly supervise? No one is arguing that they have to allow this.

[RINO Tom]

The age of consent, like all other minimum ages for serious adult activities (marriage, military, smoking, drinking beer/wine), should be at 18.

This is only a remotely serious opinion if you have a Romeo and Juliet law, dude.  Like, lots of seniors date sophomores in high school, hate to break it to Atlas.

[darklordoftech]

Some people on this forum are such prudes it's incredible. Thank God none of you will ever be anywhere near the levers of public policy.

The Conservative position should be to encourage people not to have sex before they get married. They should also return to advocating for abstinence only education

Part of why Trump won in 2016 was that he didn’t talk about things like this. These culture wars hurt Republicans by making them seem like prudes and people who are strongly anti-sex-before-marriage and abstinence-only will vote Republican anyway without these culture wars because of abortion.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yes I agree with you that we should should not make pre-marital sex illegal

Sigged.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Another issue with some sort of graduated system is that people obviously aren't going to be checking IDs or doing calculations when setting age ranges on dating apps, etc. The current laws are pretty easy to understand and not an issue, don't f[inks] anyone under 18, pretty straightforward, and there's age gap exceptions in place for cases where it would obviously be kind of ridiculous to consider someone a sex offender. But making someone a sex offender because they were not fully up to date on whatever some bracket was or because they miscalculated or were just two months outside of some acceptable window or whatever is pretty ludicrous...oh and good luck getting juries to actually convict for that. Like actually prosecuting a 26-year old for having a 21-year old boyfriend/girlfriend just because their birthday was two months before the younger one's? Just LOL.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

If no one would have sex outside of marriage, this wouldn't be an issue.

[Sestak]

If no one would have sex outside of marriage, this wouldn't be an issue.

Yes. If no one drove cars traffic accidents wouldn’t be an issue, and if no one consumed any fuel or electricity or products manufactured with them climate wouldn’t be an issue. However, based on context this thread seems to be focusing on the real world, where none of this will ever be relevant.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Another "clearly didn't think this through" issue with Ferguson and Tony's proposal is that now the age of consent laws are pretty easy to enforce because teenagers aren't emancipated, they almost always live with their parents or relevant guardian, etc. That's not true for adults, even very young ones. 18-year old runs away to go be with some 30-year old they met online? You can argue that perhaps that's not healthy, but how exactly do you enforce laws against it? You can't force an 18-year old to return to their parents. 18-year old moves into a house with friends after high school and works a full time job and has a 25-year old boyfriend or girlfriend? Again, what is going to happen, ban them from visiting? Is there now going to be age limits on who can visit other adults in their homes? 21-year old who lives with their 26-year old boyfriend/girlfriend? Are we going to actually arrest the older party and charge them as a sex offender when the younger adult party living independently on their own has no problem with it?

This is another key issue that Ferguson and Tony fail to grasp I think, if someone is trusted as an adult and has to right to live on their own without the restrictions commonly placed on teenagers, you can't feasibly restrict what type of relationships they have.

"But what about alcohol and tobacco only be allowed for 21+ ages?"

Yes, those laws are TOTALLY a roaring success and certainly keep people 18-20 from drinking and smoking, and are clearly a shining example to emulate in other policies.

Beyond that though, it's also much easier to prohibit a certain age from buying a certain product than it is to prohibit such an age who are able to live on their own from having relationships for the reasons mentioned above. Also Tony's proposal would restrict people above that relevant age as well.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

The age of consent should be lowered. Americans are way too puritanical when it comes to sexual intercourse.

Ur nasty

This you?

Endorsements:

House-

Matt Gaetz FL-1

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh boy. Of course an off-the-cuff post I make spitballing an idea causes a firestorm, while the posts I put actual time and effort into get zero attention. Sometimes I hate this place.

Again, I'm not committed to any of the specific numbers I mentioned here (that's the point of starting a f**king parenthetical with "say,", you know!) and we could no doubt haggle over them until the cows come home if you're so inclined. But it seems clear to me that people in their late teens and early 20s do often get emotionally or sexually exploited by older adults at the time when their brains aren't fully developed and they're almost always in a position of de facto social inferiority, and I don't think this is something the state should just shrug its shoulders about.

[Oakvale]

broke: half your age plus seven

woke: Okay so first you need to get your age and calculate the general 'tolerance margin' based on §3 c.1 of the Act. Then remember you have a range of not more than twelve calendar months in which you won't go to prison as a nonce, provided your age is 15.  16 is covered in c.2 (subsections 1-3). For older ages it gets a little more complicated: refer back to c.1. Take the 'tolerance margin' you calculated earlier and multiply by a number between 1.2 and 1.6 (but not exactly 1.4) and you will end up with an est

[Boobs]

If no one would have sex outside of marriage, this wouldn't be an issue.

Yes. If no one drove cars traffic accidents wouldn’t be an issue, and if no one consumed any fuel or electricity or products manufactured with them climate wouldn’t be an issue. However, based on context this thread seems to be focusing on the real world, where none of this will ever be relevant.

And it’s not even accurate? People could get married at age 18, to someone older than 20, and this hypothetical age of consent would still matter.