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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Jocke, the age of consent varies from state to state in the US. In Tennessee, it used to be (may still be for all I know) for a 16 year old to have sex with someone 21 or under. It was also legal for a 14 year old to have sex with someone as old as 16. That's not necessarily the way it is in every state, but for someone over 21, the general rule of thumb is that the other party has to be at least 18.
To answer your question from you OP, the punishments vary from state to state, but you're almost certainly looking at a few years in jail. Yes, even if the kid is 15.
The US (and most of the Western World) has drawn a series of lines of demarkation between adults and children. There are several, but the big ones are 16, 18 and 21 for various priveledges and punishments. These lines have to be drawn somewhere, or we'd risk having drunk children driving around with guns drawn on their way to vote Barney the Dinosaur into office. Other countries draw the lines in different spots, but make no mistake that they're drawn.
Do I necessarily think that 18 is the perfect age for every child? No. Do I think it's a good average? Maybe. Do I think that anyone over 18 hooking up with a 13 or 14 year old is sick and wrong? Oh yeah.
If that's what you want to discuss, I'm game.
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Playing devil's advocate, who's to say that these are the appropriate places to draw the necessary lines? The problem with arbitrary standards is that they attempt to codify a process that is highly individual. Some kids are like Shanifaye's at 14. Some are that way at 16. But what about a 15 year old who is emotionally and physically mature past the average for her (or his) age? It certainly happens. And how can we really draw a fixed line on this? It does seem a bit absurd that a girl who is a week away from her 18th birthday is jailbait, whereas that same girl a mere week later is fine.
I sometimes wonder if children would mature faster emotionally if they weren't coddled so much. Does a 16 year old need to be protected because she's not emotionally mature, or is she emotionally immature because she's so over-protected? Is there another side to this coin?