Because I was a child, I was missing large pieces of the perspective required to understand adult situations. Children can be sexual. Children can pursue. Girl children in particular may have already learned how to manipulate and bargain with their sexuality at a very young age. They are still children. Like all children, they test boundaries, boundaries that adults must set and maintain.
The thing is, why should this consent issue be only about 40-year-old men who screw 14-year-olds?
Why does a 14-year-old have more ability to consent with a 14-year-old boy? Fourteen-year-old boys don't manipulate girls? They have a mature sense of the consequences of sex?
Does this mean I want to criminalize teen sex? No.
Except that culturally, we should be sending teens the message that you have no business having sex.
This is plain common sense, and it cuts across all religious and ideological lines.
