Quote:
Originally Posted by DSTRen13
Age of consent's different in every state. Personally, 16 sounds like a pretty good age to me. If you're old enough to handle a car, you're old enough to choose your sexual partners (if you choose to have any). They're both extremely dangerous.
JMO.
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I agree with this in principle, but many age-of-consent laws actually have an age difference component built in, so 16 year olds can't get down with 45 year olds at their bequest.
The issue, to my mind, is that the "cutoff" for adulthood fluctuates wildly depending on the particular thing you're discussing - you have to draw the line somewhere, and while 16 might be a fine age to make sexual decisions, as a rule I'm not too concerned with the current state of the "window" age gap rules. There are obviously corner cases where a 16 year old might be in love with a 32 year old man, but those will likely sort themselves out - I think that as long as they're considered children, though, we have to allow the law to view them as such in as many ways as possible. That was really why I responded above like I did - change the law if you want to change the law, but don't act like we give 16 year olds free reign over their own lives as it is.
This is where the problems with trying as an adult stem from, also - it's arbitrary.