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.

>>31
"you are naive in this respect: part of the passage from adolesence into adulthood involves working around parental control."

you say this as if it's a good thing.  adolescence->adulthood should, if anything, be more strict on 'follow the rules', because that's what adults are expected to do.  once they're out and on their own, they can ignore their parents control if they so desire.  it's their own problem then.

if teens have sex without their parents approval when they're old enough to know right from wrong but not experienced enough to properly understand the consequences of their actions, they should be punished, either by the parents or by the law.  anything else would be irresponsible.  shoplifting and murder aren't 'okay' if they're just done for the purpose of experimenting and fun, why should sex with minors be?