Anyone that doesn’t want kids being sexualized is a fascist, and also this warning sticker at a chain restaurant is proof of the real problems facing our country right now.

Like, there are a number of states where young girls can still get married to way older guys, and that's gross and should be outlawed. But probably the more common case is someone in their late teens getting married to a young adult.

I think that's still not good, but it's nowhere near as fucked up as a 40-year-old marrying a 14-year-old.

@dave
Why are you against a young marriage?
Don't you think it's better then letting them collect debt in uni, let them get ""tricked"" by chad and then force them to 9-5 till they end up on antidepressants?

This is a false dichotomy, there are way more options than just "get married in your teens" and "go to university and have the frat running a train on you".

@dave @LukeAlmighty Do they just idle for years and years? Why?

@applejack @dave
This is the hardest part, that poasters will never understand.

Hormones start raging at the age of 15. That is primary school. That means, that the girl cannot possibly marry the first guy, till 3 years later. Fuck that, she cannot even talk about it.

But 3 years later, she is already in high school, with a random set of people and away from her family. And this "friends group randomization" won't end up till she's 25.

@applejack
Do you see any logic in what I just described @dave , or does it all seem to you as a bunch of nonsense?

Nah, I've thought about this for a while. Basic thoughts
- Statutory rape laws always need close-in-age exceptions (Romeo and Juliet Laws), otherwise you end up in weird situations, which have happened, where a 19-year-old sleeping with a 17-year-old gets put on the sex offender registry, when their relationship would have been fine if they were 18 and 20. Or you end up with two 15-year-olds sleeping with each other, and both getting charged with statutory rape, because they were both under the age of consent. This has also happened.
- As a rule your age limits should be drawn around actual criminality, not just seediness. Statutory rape is a serious charge that if convicted can easily ruin your life, and the punishment should fit the crime.
- Unlike most crimes which operate off of a "mens rea" (guilty mind) standard, which requires that you knew what you were doing, statutory rape laws tend to operate on a "strict liability" standard, which means that even if you had reason to believe the person you were sleeping with was of age (for example, you met in a bar, which requires showing ID, which implies that everyone in that bar is of age), you can still be tried and sentenced even if your belief that they were of age was reasonable.
- I don't like this, I think it should be mens rea like anything else, meaning if you had reason to believe they were of age, then you shouldn't be able to be tried. So if she looked old enough to get into the bar, and she's telling you she's 18, then you shouldn't be liable if it turns out she was lying.

@dave @LukeAlmighty @applejack Oh no, whatever will we do without hookups with people we meet at bars

People will go to bars and hookup regardless of the legality. It's like drugs, or any other vice. The idea that outlawing something the people want will make it disappear is a fantasy.

@dave @LukeAlmighty @applejack My serious thoughts would be something like this:
-Romeo and Juliet laws are good
-I've never encountered a man who had an issue regarding getting with an underage girl accidentally, so I suspect the frequency of this issue is being exaggerated
-Hookups among people who meet at bars will always be a thing to an extent, sure. But if you play with fire, you might get burned

@KonataWagner1066 @applejack @dave
The problem with the Romeo and Juliette laws is, that it doesn't solve the education trap.

There is no reason a kid should study till 25. Programming doesn't take that long to make you employable. But we have filled education with so much random shit, that highschool absolvents are barely employable.

@LukeAlmighty @applejack @dave I agree on the education front. The problem with education though, at least in America, is that the refusal to recognize inherent differences in intelligence means we'll never do tracking. So everyone without a clear direction and not much smarts will be pushed into college and waste a lot of their time.

That being said, I still don't like the idea of teen marriage and think the ideal age for that is probably mid twenties. And trust me, if my family's genealogy records are anything to go by, you don't need to start pumping out kids at 18 to have huge families.