Do you believe young women (or men) who are 21, 22, 23 or 24 should be allowed to consent to relationships with older men or women who are 10 or 20 years older? I know we should have free will, but should we be allowed to self-destruct just because we “can”?
Allowed to? Sure, you’re well into adulthood and that’s not something you want to legally regulate between consenting adults.
But from a societal norms perspective, the minimum age of “half your age plus seven” holds up pretty well. 34 year old dating a 24 year old? Sure! 44 year old dating a 24 year old? That gives me the ick, but I don’t think that should make it illegal.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 15 hours ago
I don’t want to live in a society that encroaches on interpersonal relationships enough to outlaw large age differences between romantic partners who are all consenting adults.
YaBoyMax@programming.dev 15 hours ago
The age of majority is a pretty arbitrary line that we draw; I don’t see how this would be fundamentally different. We already “encroach” on interpersonal relationships by not allowing adults to date minors (which again is defined completely arbitrarily).
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
The age of majority (or various ages) are somewhat arbitrary, but it has to be drawn somewhere because it’s used to allow a whole bunch of activities rather than just for relationships.
There’s a significant difference between “you must be this age to be considered old enough to make your own choices on a variety of things” and “here’s a specific range of people who you are not allowed to have sexual intercourse with”