Genarlow Wilson was freed today. Thank GOD.Sex laws in this country are ridiculous. They either seek to control women or to let women control men, never anything in between.
For the sake of this argument I am excluding pedophilia (sexual assault on someone who has not undergone puberty).
Anyway.
Statutory rape laws-- I call these "Daddy's Little Girl" laws because they all seem to say, "Oh, my precious little baby would NEVER want sex, that man must have COERCED her!" Yeah, right. My opinion is that if a teenager actually lies about her age-- as in, tells a person over the age of consent that s/he is over the age of consent-- then there should be a slight punishment for not bothering to check, never more than a few months in prison. What's more, S/HE should be punished for lying to the man or woman who slept with her/him. I'm thinking like a year of community service plus paying damages to the "offender."
However, if s/he merely lies by omission-- never says one way or another what his/her age is-- the underage person shouldn't be punished, but it should be a slightly reduced sentence for the overage person as opposed to if they actually knew beforehand their age.
Cases of ephebophilia-- and please, let's call it that, none of this "statuatory rape" or "pedophilia" crap, call it what it is-- sex with a teenager-- should be determined based on both consent, and if that consent was coerced somehow-- promising not to tell about some misdeed, or something. There is a difference between actually taking advantage of someone and only taking advantage of them because they're not really old enough to know better.And for Pete's sake, people, it's not statutory if they're BOTH under the age of consent, if one is and the other is less than five years older than them, or if the older person was mentally incapacitated somehow, like if they were high. Stupid and unfortunate, but not statutory (it could be sexual assault, though, if s/he didn't consent). Age-based consent isn't like normal consent. Normal consent is cut and dry-- yes or no. Age-based consent is "Is she old enough? What if she's lying? Is that ID fake?" You have to cut people some slack.
At the same time, it's kind of skeezy to want to have sex with young teenagers. I'm just saying you shouldn't attack a guy because he thought that young, hot girl was worthy of attention and she turned out to be a year too young. Then again, I also think all drugs should be legal for people over the age of 18 and the drinking age should be lowered etc, etc. So clearly, I am a Libertarian idiot, at least according to most liberals.
