Comment by scholia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scholia | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

From Wikipedia:

So, as of May 2019, in the 34 states that have set a marriage age by statute, the lower minimum marriage age when all exceptions are taken into account, are:

    2 states have a minimum age of 14: Alaska and North Carolina.
    4 states have a minimum age of 15.
    20 states have a minimum age of 16.
    8 states have a minimum age of 17.

In Massachusetts the general marriage age is 18, but children may be married with judicial consent with no minimum age limit. In the absence of any statutory minimum age, one opinion is that the minimum common law marriageable age of 12 for girls and 14 for boys may still apply. Unlike many other states, in Massachusetts a child's marriage does not automatically emancipate the minor, or increase his or her legal rights beyond allowing the minor to consent to certain medical treatments.

-- End of quotation --

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_age_in_the_United_Sta...

I'm not an American, so I don't understand why you have not fixed this obvious problem.

Those exceptions are related to the age of the other person.

So, for example, in a place where the age of consent is at 18, an 18 year old could have sex with a 16 year old without being considered a paedophile, while a 25 year old could not have sex with anyone below 18.

There's nothing about those exceptions that's US-specific. The number I've posted are the official ones if the other person is above 20-something, while the numbers that you've posted are applicable when both parties are similar in age.

> So, for example, in a place where the age of consent is at 18, an 18 year old could have sex with a 16 year old without being considered a paedophile, while a 25 year old could not have sex with anyone below 18.

That doesn't sound correct to me. As I understand it, an adult (18 and above in the US) cannot legally have sex with someone under the age of consent. So if the age of consent is 18, and an 18 year old has sex with a 16 year old, that is considered statutory rape or child sexual abuse. A quick Wikipedia skim[0] seems to agree with me.

Perhaps you meant to say "if the age of consent is 16"? Even then, that doesn't sound right. In that case, both an 18 year old and 25 year old could legally have sex with a 16 year old.

There do appear to be some exceptions in some parts of the world where, as you say, there are exceptions for people of similar age. So in some places, an 18 year old might not be prosecuted for having sex with a 16 or 17 year old if the age of consent is 18. But these seem to be few and far between.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent

> As I understand it, an adult (18 and above in the US) cannot legally have sex with someone under the age of consent. So if the age of consent is 18, and an 18 year old has sex with a 16 year old, that is considered statutory rape or child sexual abuse.

That's a pretty common mistake to make. There's two different sets of rules that kinda blend together when you try to reduce age of consent to a single digit. Wikipedia indeed agrees with me:

> In most states there is not a single age in which a person may consent, but rather consent varies depending upon the minimum age of the younger party, the minimum age of the older party, or the differences in age. Some states have a single age of consent. Thirty U.S. states have age gap laws which make sexual activity legal if the ages of both participants are close to one another, and these laws are often referred to as "Romeo and Juliet laws". Other states have measures which reduce penalties if the two parties are close in age, and others provide an affirmative defense if the two parties are close in age. Even though state laws regarding the general age of consent and age gap laws differ, it is common for people in the United States to assume that sexual activity with someone under 18 is statutory rape.

Paragraph taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_...

In any case, we've deviated from the topic far enough. I'd argue that it's a weird thing to advocate for lowering of the age of consent. At best, I'm willing to agree that RMS uses terms like an edgy teen. Minors sext each other, therefore, we should make child pornography legal (seriously, I'm not making this up: https://stallman.org/archives/2012-jul-oct.html#15_September...). Age of consent needs to be lowered, therefore paedophilia should become legal. He talks about the edge cases to argue for the whole thing, completely ignoring that those edge cases are not what most people think about when using those terms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com