Statutory rape

The sex offender threads touched on this in a few places. There are some people who believe that there is nothing wrong with having sex with teenagers, especially if the older partner is not much older than the younger person. Some say that if an 18 year old man is prosecuted for having sex with a 15 year old girl, that it is insulting to the girl, suggesting that she does not have sexual feelings of her own. On the otherhand, there are adults who are predatory against younger people and young people who get hurt by them.
Obviously, there are some cases that are more clear cut than others. Some teens are harmed more by the events than others. Some relationships are not predatory and occaisionally result in a good lasting marriage. On the otherhand, by not prosecuting certain cases, are we discouraging girls who were emotionally harmed from coming forward.

I'd much rather we had something along the lines of "exploitative and misleading relationships" that were available to all people at any age. They used to be called breach of contract actions, but those aren't plausible anymore.

Personally, I don't feel that all sexual and sensual relationships should be a path towards marriage so the argument that some May December (or even May-August) relationships are acceptable for that reason holds no water with me. Especially in same-sex relationships, where marriage is currently impossible, many young people have few choices in partners if they want a relationship at all, and so end up violating the stat. rape laws.

In those cases, it's usually the parents who are up in arms, not the young people. I'm bi, and at 17, I entered into a LTR with another woman that ended only with her death in a car accident. (I'd still be with her if she had lived.) She was significantly older than I, but the fact of the matter was that the number of lesbian or bisexual peers I had was... zero, or apparently zero. If anyone was not straight, they sure weren't advertising.

I don't feel that she took advantage of me in the least - I would say that if anything, I was the aggressor, not she. But if my parents had known about the relationship while I was a minor (I was away at university, so they didn't know until after my 18th birthday) they would have done everything in their power to get my love thrown in prison and stripped of everything. They would have used the stat-rape laws like a bludgeon, not like a tool to help those who are truly preyed upon. As it was, they cut off support and would not acknowledge that I had lost anything at all when she died.

My issue with stat rape laws is that they do not ever take into account the feelings, wishes or desires of the person who is underage - either way. If a young person is comfortable and happy with a relationship with an older person, but the YP's parents disapprove, then the case goes to court. Alternately, if (and I've seen this in the military a few times) the young woman is "given in marriage" by her parents to an older man, without much consent on her side, the courts will not take the case up, even if she is dreadfully unhappy and emotionally wrecked. (DH had a guy in his unit be put on suicide watch after his teenage wife by arranged marriage decided to leave him, clean out their bank account, and a few other bizarre actions.)

The law still treats minors, and especially minor girls and gay minor boys, as property, and their lives and bodies to be subject to their parents' will. I'm not okay with that.

On the flip side, there's no recourse for someone who has reached majority who is emotionally damaged by an exploitative relationship. Even when the manipulation is similar, or when the relationship is distinctly predatory, we can't cry emotional ravishment, even when that is what it is.