*sighs* So, another take about this is apparently floating around, and I am not going to engage directly, but a reminder.

Age of consent laws aren't that complicated.

If the age of consent is 16 in a state, it means if you are over the age of 16, you can consent to sex with anybody else over the age of 16. Anyone. Like, if you're over 16 and you want to bang a grandpa, they can't stop you.

Whether or not this is ETHICAL is a whole different question. And their simplicity in and of itself is part of the issue. Where the age of consent is 18, it means an 18 year old and a 17 year old cannot legally have sex. That's why Romeo and Juliet laws exist -

- which are the laws that dictate that teenagers within a certain age gap are allowed to legally have sex/consent.

But age of consent laws themselves are not about teenagers having sex with other teenagers. They are exactly what they say on the tin.

It isn't even 18 in a lot of states, folks. The federal age is 18 so that if you're looking at cross-state romances and cyber-anything, yes, you have to be 18 for sexual content. But please stop pushing this bad faith interpretation.

It is also *actively dangerous* to be telling people the wrong thing about age of consent laws. People have the right to know when a law does and doesn't protect them. What, you're going to have a 17 year old convinced she's protected by statutory only to be laughed at?

It's bad enough trying to report actual statutory without setting people up for awful situations with this kind of nonsense.