Originally posted by woodsman'sgame
PS

When I talked about teens having sexual experiences I meant with each other. I do not condone at all an adult male or female getting involved in a sexual relationship with a teenager under 18.
There is no USA (federal) law concerning the age of consent. That age is set by each individual state. And its not 18 in every state.
I also don't agree that all sexual contact between someone over 18 and somone under 18 is wrong. We are much much too quick to adopt this one size fits all attitude and add a bit of morality to stiffle any dissent.
While it is one thing to say an adult male (or female) in their 30s or older should not engage in sexual relations with a girl, lets say 13 or 14, it is quite another to say that a junior at college who is 21 can not and should not start a relationship, including a sexual realtionship with a 17 year old freshman, if both are consenting. And this is just one example. In many states the age at which someone can consent to marriage is quite a bit lower then 18. Its not against the law to have sex with your spouse in any state. So, a man 21 and a woman 16 could get married in many states, and have all the sex they want. But what if you are gay. Sorry, no such deal. And why did I pick those ages? Those are my parents ages when they met and married. Next year they will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversity. Funny, today they'd throw my father in jail and everyone would agree this was wrong and he is a pervert. Actually, just a young man who fell in love with a younger woman and got her to marry him. And there was nothing unusual about that in this country 20, 30, 40, 50s.
I have traveled many areas of this world, and it might suprise some of those whose social and sexual morals are made up of experiences from the West that what we consider as moral and legal truths in this country are not necessarily what is practiced or accepted as such in other parts of the world. Western culture has, since the 1940s, been ever lengthening the age at which we say our children are no longer kids. Many of our sexual laws are not practiced worldwide. Wasn't even practiced in this country 150 years ago. Wasn't even practiced in the southern US 50 years ago.
I mean no offense to anyone who holds a different opinion then I do. But I do feel like we would all be better served if we made more distinctions when we discuss this topic, and not just jump on the bandwagon of saying well...any one that is one day over 18 touching any one that is one day under 18 is a sin/crime/morally wrong. I believe in our effort to protect actual children from actual predatory men we have cast a very wide net and have in recent years criminalized both the adnormal and morally wrong behavior of sexually preying on innocent kids with what up until this point in most the world was considered quite normal and acceptable, that being the interaction between young males and older teenage women. Just my two cents worth.