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I tend to agree with "better safe than sorry" since it's unclear. It can go too far though if you end up punishing many more adults for tangentially related crimes than the number of children who were harmed by actual abuse.

As for cultural norms. Many primitive cultures use age of puberty as age of consent. I heard of one (probably Amazon) tribe where sex was treated as common as eating or pooing. It wasn't related to marriage, which they did have. Children were involved much younger than our age of consent. I don't think you could say they were harmed since it was normal behavior and they apparently grew up without emotional problems.

We tend to confuse normal sexual attraction to teenagers with peadophilia and lump them all into the same group. For example teachers having relationships with underage teenage students. It might be harmful but the sexuality is normal, not deviant.