(June 17, 2015 at 2:38 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Hi everyone.
So, how do y'all feel about this? Personally, I think it's very unfair. The dude was lied to! And now he faces 25 years as a sex offender for believing a lie?? This is something that can destroy his life.
I obiously don't condone this behavior, but I do think the sex offender list is for dangerous predators, not people who engage in merely "inappropriate behavior."
http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/16/male-t...ith-female
Given the way the laws are, it is prudent to be careful about age and not simply take someone's word for such things. That is not a comment on the rightness or wrongness of the law; it is a comment about what one should do when one lives somewhere that such laws are in place. It is plainly stupid to just believe a stranger who makes some claim about his or her age.
A problem with changing the law (regarding whether it is a crime, not about the exact punishment) would be that many people would knowingly have sex with underage children and just have them lie about their age first, and pretend that they were fooled if anyone finds out they had sex. If someone lying is taken as a defense, then that effectively means that there is no age restriction on what age person one can have sex with.
So, should there be an age limit or not? If there is, how should it be enforced?
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
