Is it Time to Change the Age of Consent?

It is time to face facts, it is time to sit up and take notice of our biology.  In the Uk the age of consent is 16, this is looked upon as an open joke by young teenagers today.  Not only, in practice is it pretty much un-enforceable, but it is also ridiculous.   I realise that there must be a line; to protect our investment in children there must be line.  However, this law currently criminalises sixteen-year-old boys who have sex with 15-year-old girls, even if the difference is age is only a day!!

 This law seems completely unreasonable. On two fronts:  This first is simple that there is a reasonable argument to be make that human being are designed to have sex with sexually mature human beings.  The ability to have sex, and thus the desire to do so begins in girls at about the age of ten, and in boys more like 12 or 12.  So, it is natural human instinct for people of about the age of ten or twelve to have sex.  Not only that but it has been legal and accepted in human society for this to happen for long time, and illegal, for just a tick in the second hand of our society.

Take Romeo and Juliet, the greatest love story of all.  Romeo falls in love with Juliet, and then they both die for their love.  What greater maturity of love, what greater power and depth could one wish for?  Romeo, a young man himself, Juliet, 14 of course.  Is it so wrong?  The age of consent in Canada, 14, Japan, 13, in Austria It depends on the age difference between the two people, what common sense!!

Secondly the law is ignored by everyone under the age of sixteen, and is practically unenforceable.  If it were enforced then it simple would serve to criminalise and punish young people for being young.

Now, in the modern day children are expensive; their education long and complex.  So I suspect that a move to an age of consent of 12 would be in line with nature, but unreasonable.  So, perhaps simply a move to a more rational system:  The age of consent moved kept at 16 or dropped to 15, however,  with the caveat that the age of consent is 14, if the individuals are within three years of one another.  Thus a 17 year old would legally sleep with 14 year old, but an 18 year old could not.  It seems that some flexibility of this nature is necessary to protect young people, but also to offer a flexibility that allows to the law to function in a way to detrimental to all concerned.