[ck425]

It makes it far easier to prosecute people who prey on teenagers. I don't disagree that two under 16 year olds having sex is perfectly natural and ok, though not everyone agrees. But with the age of consent being 13 sexual predators could easily seduce under 16s and claim they consented when in fact being so young they had no idea what they were doing.

[wjk]

Sexual predators could easily seduce 16-20 (hell, even higher) too. Why not increase the age of consent even more if you're going by with that argument.

[notahacker]

Because the circumstances in which a 13 year old may be sexually and emotionally mature enough to consent to sex with an adult and not be a victim of manipulation are extremely unusual. That is considerably less likely to be the case in 16-20 year olds, for reasons which have as much to do with biology as prevailing social opinions

I'm assuming you agree there should be some age cut off point, unless you think sex with infants is fine and dandy so long as infants aren't looking to testify against the paedophile.

[thaumasiotes]

> I'm assuming you agree there should be some age cut off point, unless you think sex with infants is fine and dandy so long as infants aren't looking to testify against the paedophile.

Just up front, the form of that argument will lose you a lot of respect.

Here are three approaches to sex with infants that don't involve a cutoff age at all:

- Physical maturity threshold, e.g. menstruation / ejaculation. In a sense, this is the approach we use to drinking and driving.

- Mental maturity threshold -- an infant is not capable of anything, and so is guaranteed to fall on the banned side of the line. The biggest use of this kind of thing that I'm aware of is trying juveniles as adults.

- Just figure that nobody wants to have sex with infants. (This isn't, in the literal sense, true; I believe the youngest documented mother was two. However, it can easily be so-close-to-true-that-enforcement-is-a-loss-to-society.) This is the approach we use to prevent people from bombing trains, subways, museums, city buses, and pretty much everything else except airplanes.

[itengelhardt]

Shouldn't that be handled by existing laws - i.e. you charge the perp with rape and let the court decide?