The age of consent

Of course a teenage boy who has sex with a teenage girl is not a paedophile, although he has always been a criminal for doing a lot less than that (even if he were the younger party), whereas an equalisation in that law a couple of years ago caused all hell to break loose among the strange sect that has a monopoly on social policy, and almost on comment, in this country. That equalisation still seems to have passed by all contributors to the latest debate. The same people who otherwise insist that teenage girls must be treated as grown women and teenage boys as small children (if their existence is acknowledged at all) simply presuppose that this arrangement should be reversed in this one area alone. Why?

But then, why do we base this debate on a premise that we all know to be false, namely that sexual intercourse, as most people would understand the term, is normal in the early teens? Everyone knows that nowhere near fifty per cent of 14-year-olds engages is such behaviour, yet everyone speaks as if that were, if anything, a conservative estimate.

If the law in this area should reflect how people actually behave (a debatable point, but if it should), and certainly if it is to protect the most vulnerable, then it should be changed to criminalise any sexual activity with any person under 18 years of age who is more than three years younger than oneself, with a maximum sentence of imprisonment for twice the number of years difference in age, or of life imprisonment where that difference is five years or more.