rant
@Mr_NutterButter i think people just fundamentally do not understand the reason age of consent laws exist in the first place. it is mostly about keeping children safe from exploitation by people outside of their peer groups. maybe it's just different cultures or something but at least where i'm at, a 14 and a 17 year old could be attending the same school and the same youth groups (sports, church, clubs, etc). hell they could even be on the same varsity sports team in some circumstances.
obviously, though maybe not so obviously to some retards, if someone ages out of that peer group while dating someone within it, it's a completely different situation since they were in that group when they started dating. it's not like the dude is going to turn 18 and then immediately have bad intentions or some shit.
from the context given in the clip that i saw, it seemed like the people on the tv show were all in college, so we're talking about some like brilliant 14 year old with a smart 17 year old taking college classes together and we're trying to act like the guy is going to take advantage of her by default or some shit. just weird, man.
the actual weird part of the clip was that it seemed like the dude was being basically blackmailed into dating her anyway, even though he felt uncomfortable with the age difference, but that's besides the point.