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.

>>36
because sex with minors doesn't compare to shoplifting and murder? 
i think its only in america that parents think teens don't know the consequences of sex, i'm not sure how true this is, but in most other places it happens that teens know more about risks like STDs/pregnancy than their parents do.  Can't say the same for children though

i don't see why you would need your parents approval to have sex, your consequences are your own, if some kid beat some other kid with a baseball bat, he didn't ask for his parent's approval, not that it would matter if he planned on carrying it out.  It's like asking your mom if you can go to the bathroom every time, the point of growing up is to handle these things yourself, you don't magically become immune to sex risks once you pass 18.

i think its fairer to say that the few teens/kids that do in fact rape another or get somebody pregnant when they don't want to be, are the ones that be punished by law.