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Comment by NoImmatureAdHom | Hacker News Reader

"Are you comparing the rape of a minor to homosexuality?"

Yes, that's exactly it. Respectable people would have felt the same way about homosexuality 100 years ago as you do about sex involving minors.

Further, your characterization as "rape of a minor" is problematic. What's a minor? If one minor is involved, it automatically becomes rape? In much of Europe ages of consent are surprisingly low (14) to Americans, who tend to expect 18. What about a 17 year old and a 19 year old? Two 14 year olds? A 15 year old and a 20 year old? Is what's 100% wrong and prison-bound in the U.S. morally permissible in Spain because the laws are different?

Or maybe you have access to the Objective Moral Truths, such that this game is easy for you? If so, do share. It'd make all of this so much easier.

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> If one minor is involved, it automatically becomes rape?

YES. This is how it works legally, because one person does not have the emotional and intellectual maturity to provide fully informed consent.

I really think that lumping forcible rape in the same category as a 17 year old successfuly seducing a 21 year old in California (as opposed to, say, Spain) is bad for discourse.

Even if we grant the latter is harmful and wrong, the mechanism via which the harm happens is different, as is the amount of harm.

>a 17 year old successfuly seducing a 21 year old

Most countries have laws allowing relationships within an age difference of 3 or 4 or 5 years.

But some people want to blur the lines around consent claiming that a 15yo can consent to sex with some 45yo without the latter being held responsible.

> the mechanism via which the harm happens is different, as is the amount of harm

I never argued otherwise.

Just like for any other illegal behavior, legal systems are designed take into account the circumstance and impact of an event.

But this does not change the initial point about informed consent and rape being rape.

> But this does not change the initial point about informed consent and rape being rape.

I think it does. "Rape being rape" relies on the word having a precise meaning where all things in the category share essential characteristics that allow you to make moral judgements based on category membership.

But "rape", like all heavily contested political words with high moral weight, is definitely not such a word. It has a canonical example value (unfortunately I feel I have to be specific here: a stranger dragging a fighting women into the bushes and sticking his penis in her until he cums), but has a range of meanings that varies fairly drastically across conversational contexts (e.g. we talking ethics/morality? Law? Descriptiveness?), geography (e.g. is drunk sex rape? Depends on jurisdiction. What counts as a "minor"?), time and even subcultures.

No, it doesn't.

What about Japan where age of consent is 13?

Or Switzerland were the age of consent is 16, although if the age gap between parties is three years or less – for example between a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old – no charges can be brought

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