Graded Age of Consent Laws

Why not propose a scheme along these lines?  The first number is the age of one partner, and the range of numbers is the range of people of a certain age who can legally have sex with a person of first.  It goes for any combination or number of sexes.

14: 11-17
15: 12-18
16: 12-24
17: 12-25
18-21: 14-up
21: 15-up

The thing that really bugs society is the whole ADOLESCENCE/children question around the consent laws.  In theory, we have no immediate moral problem with a 25 year old fucking an 80 year old, since both of them have made the mystical transition into adulthood.  However, we say that a 40 year old and a ten year old is RIGHT OUT.  To quantify the ages so precisely around adolescence seems strange, as well.  To accomodate this, we could have less nasty non-jail sentences (seeing a shrink/community service) for, for example, an 18 year old tapping a 13 year-old), all the way up to whatever age is right-out.  Send a 25 year old who got with an 8 year old to jail.  The process of fixing the age cutoffs could be helped by the psychological establishment.

Sure, 13-17 year olds are both physically and emotionally equipped to bear offspring--it just depends on the enviroment they're in.

Imagine a 14-year old girl giving birth some 10,000 years ago in a small tribal village. She wouldn't have to take care of the baby all by herself, she would have the support of her mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, tribemates, and even the goddamn father! In today's modern culture, where school, universities and expanded career choices have extended childhood well into the 20's ("adultolescense"), your average 14-year old is not well-prepared for childrearing, she would be thrust out into the scornful world as a pariah and a liability with no one to look out for her. Hell, even 24-year olds no longer have the social/financial ability to raise a kid!

In short, this isn't the bronze age. </armchairprofessor>