Should pedophilia be legal?

[Ben Davis]

Paedophilia is having sex with prepubescent children.

This. People often forget this and conflate issues of pedophilia and statutory rape. Let's start by saying that unconsenting sex is always wrong, no matter what. Then we can ask 'is it right to have sex with physically immature people?'. Of course not. They're too physically immature for it, their body's simply not ready. This point makes considerations as black & white as rape. Consequently, pedophilia is wrong.

At that point, we can start asking 'once physically mature (i.e. pubescent), is it right to have sex with people who may/may not have a proper intellectual understanding of their actions & the consequences?'. This is the point where age of consent/statutory rape becomes the discussion and different cultures have come to different conclusions. In the UK, 16 is the age. This works pretty well to protect the intellectually immature from the advances of sexual predators whilst allowing people the freedom to practice their sexuality fairly soon after reaching puberty (when sexual curiosity is strongest). Our laws of precedent mean that we have a pretty balanced way of judging individual 'edge' cases, generally (e.g. 16 y/os having sex with 15 y/os) and with empathy. Most European countries have very similar models to ours with similar levels of success in balancing permissiveness with protection.