Age of Consent

April 27, 2017

Home » Commentary » Age of Consent

A California man I knew long ago is currently in the hot waters of moral indignation and lust for punishment. His alleged crime: having sex with a sixteen-year-old girl, whom I shall correctly call a woman, from June to September a few years ago. At the time he was fifty-four. The district attorney, no doubt an ambitious moral guardian, has added a seventh felony charge stemming from a year-long romance the man supposedly had a decade earlier with a girl of fifteen who’s now in her mid-twenties.

I must emphasize that the man, who in the most recent case was serving as a volunteer high school softball coach, should not have been romantically involved with any of the students, even if they’d been age eighteen, that arbitrary and increasingly absurd designation some states pretend is the earliest women are capable of rationally deciding to have sex with males. The accused man has pled not guilty and his case will soon go to trial, if there isn’t a plea bargain.

Since I don’t have any children and have never had sex with a woman under age eighteen, I decided to learn what wiser and more experienced people around the world believe and have forged into laws.

First, in these United States of America, only twelve states establish age eighteen as the minimum. Surprisingly, liberal bastions California and Oregon are among the strictest group. Conversely, havens of biblical conservatism Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina permit women of sixteen to say yes. In Texas the age of consent is seventeen, but girls of fourteen can proceed as long as the male is no more than three years older. Statutory rape laws also now pertain to boys and young men. Around the nation quite a few female teachers have been arrested for dallying with male students underage according to the standards of their states.

Our vast Canadian neighbor to the north also permits women of sixteen to grant legal embrace. Mexican amigos to the south, like us, do not have a national law, and allow states to determine when girls can say sí, but I stress their age range of twelve to fourteen is much too low. Most of South America decrees that women of thirteen or fourteen are legal, and no country on that huge continent requires an age higher than sixteen.

What about our wealthy and democratic European allies, what do they believe? Sixteen is the highest minimum age on the continent – except Ireland, where seventeen is okay – and many nations stipulate that ages thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen are legal. Further east, the Russian colossus and almost all the former Soviet republics have sixteen as the age of consent. In China girls only need to be fourteen. In the Philippines, native land of my wife, the age of consent is but twelve.

California therefore, for the most part, shares its draconian statutory rape laws and doctrines with only eleven U.S. states, India, Turkey, and several African nations such as Uganda and Kenya.

And what of Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and a few others in that troubled region? According to their laws, people must be married to have sex. Gracious, they’re even stricter than California.

Let’s try making sixteen the national age of consent.

World Map – Age of Consent

Posted in ,

George Thomas Clark

George Thomas Clark is the author of Hitler Here, a biographical novel published in India and the Czech Republic as well as the United States. His commentaries for GeorgeThomasClark.com are read in more than 50 countries a month.

Recent Commentary

Books

History Enhanced - George Thomas Clark
George Thomas Clark combines history and creative writing to enliven stories about fascinating people and events. In Hollywood Heartache, talented but disturbed actor Robert Walker is brilliant in front of the camera but tormented in his private life, and beautiful Joan Bennett is a popular actress until her film career is destroyed by scandal, Mass…
See More
HITLER HERE is a well researched and lyrically written biographical novel offering first-person stories by the Fuehrer and a variety of other characters. This intimate approach invites the reader to peer into Hitler’s mind, talk to Eva Braun, joust with Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler, debate with the generals, fight on land and at sea and…
See More
Art history and fiction merge to reveal the lives and emotions of great painters Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, William H. Johnson, Lee Krasner, and many others.
See More
This fast-moving collection blends fiction and movie history to illuminate the stimulating lives and careers of noted actors, actresses, and directors. Stars of this book include Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, Cate Blanchett, and Spike Lee.
See More
In this collection of thirty-eight chiseled short stories, George Thomas Clark introduces readers to actors, alcoholics, addicts, writers famous and unknown, a general, a lovelorn farmer, a family besieged by cancer, extraterrestrials threatening the world, a couple time traveling back to a critical battle, a deranged husband chasing his wife, and many more memorable people…
See More
Anne Frank On Tour and Other Stories
This lively collection offers literary short stories founded on History, Love, Need, Excess, and Final Acts.
See More
In lucid prose author George Thomas Clark recalls the challenges of growing up in a family beset by divorce, depression, and alcoholism, and battling similar problems as an adult.
See More
Let’s invite many of the greatest boxers and their contemporaries to tell their own stories, some true, others tales based on history. The result is a fascinating look into the lives and battles of those who thrilled millions but often ruined themselves while so doing.
See More
In a rousing trip through the worlds of basketball and football, George Thomas Clark explores the professional basketball league in Mexico, the Herculean talents of Wilt Chamberlain, the artistry of LeBron James, the brilliance of Bill Walsh, and lots more. Half the stories are nonfiction and others are satirical pieces guided by the unwavering hand of an inspired storyteller.
See More
Get on board this collection of satirical stories, based on news, about the entertaining but absurd and often quite dangerous events following the election of President Donald J. Trump in November 2016 until January 6, 2021, shortly after his loss to Joe Biden.
See More
Join Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and other notables on a raucous ride into a fictional world infused with facts from one of the roughest political races in modern U.S. history.
See More
History and literary fiction enliven the Barack Obama phenomenon from the African roots of his father and grandfather to the United States where young Obama struggles to control vices and establish his racial identity. Soon, the young politician is soaring but under fire from a variety of adversaries including Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.
See More
These satirical columns allow startlingly candid Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush to explain their need to control the destinies of countries, regions, and, ultimately, the world. Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Karl Rove, and other notables, not all famous, also demand part of the stage.
See More
Where Will We Sleep
Determined to learn more about those who fate did not favor, the author toured tattered, handmade refuges of those without homes and interviewed them on the streets and in homeless shelters, and conversed with the poor in the United States, Mexico, Ecuador, and Spain, and on occasion wrote composite stories to illuminate their difficult lives.
See More
In search of stimulating stories, the author interviewed prostitutes in Madrid, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua and on many boulevards in the United States, and he talked to detectives and rode the rough roads of social workers who deal with human trafficking, which is contemporary slavery, and sometimes used several lives to create stories, and everywhere he ventured he witnessed struggles of those whose lives are bound In Other Hands.
See More
In compressed language Clark presents a compilation of short stories and creative columns about relationships between men and women.
See More
Political Satire for Progressives
Available now in a single digital-only volume of four books: Echoes from Saddam Hussein, Obama on Edge, King Donald, and Down Goes Trump. In his signature style, George Thomas Clark combines satire and creative writing to illuminate many historic developments this century. Echoes from Saddam Hussein – Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush candidly explain their need to control the…
See More