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Notes -
Assume that the Congress decides to impose universal age of consent in all states. And pull from their ass the authority to do it. What do you think the current culture war coalitions and factions will push for and will it create intracoallition splits.
Hardline Religious conservatives hard - 21 with exception for marriage
Moderate Religous conservatives - 18
Centrists/liberals - they will look at Europe and see that the world didn't ended and probably say that it is 16 with romeo and juliet clause
Feminists - probably a split here - some will push for maximum, other for 16
Andrew tate fans - hard 14
Anime fans - soft 14
LGBTQ+ - a spectrum based on the how activist they are ranging from 16 to 12.
No idea about how will it go based on race and income
So, let me get this straight:
Hardline religious conservatives in Congress, many hailing from states like or constituencies resembling Alabama and Arkansas and Ohio (16) are going to set the age at 21, while the liberals from California (18) and New York (17) are going to set it at 16.
Full list here. The plurality is 16, though we all seem pretty comfortable enforcing CP laws built around 18, and you have most of the big important states (CA, NY, TX, VA, FL) higher than 16. There's actually not much of a pattern to Red/Blue: FL and CA are both 18, TX and NY are both 17, Massachusetts and Alabama are both 16. Either this issue is simply not one actually considered,
Fighting the hypo a little: if we were to see a movement form to actually pass such a law, it would undoubtedly need some passionate movement behind it, and the passion right now comes from the "SHE WAS JUST A 28 YEAR OLD BABY YOU SICK FUCK" age-gap end of things. We'd need a movement similar to Prohibition: an alliance of women and Southern Baptists. I could genuinely imagine a scenario where we get some kind of insane age-gap law that took the Romeo and Juliet law approach and tried to set the "true" age of consent at 25, with a R+J rule set at 5 years and an exception for marriage. Feminists call it a law against exploiting young women (sub rosa: against young women stealing husbands!), the Qanon caucus calls it an Epstein law, the rump-remnant of the Evangelicals is happy with any law that both serves to restrict fornication and inserts the government back into sexual morality, a bunch of IdPol types on both sides find ways to make it about protecting preferred races against the exploitation of disfavored races. Zoomer online discourse around age gaps is truly insane, older voters are broadly more conservative and will relish inserting themselves into young people's sex lives. Only 8% of couples have an age gap bigger than ten years.
That's how I could see it happening.
Closer to your hypo, if everyone for some reason was forced to vote on it tomorrow, I think we'd land on 18 with a 4 year R+J, and at least at first blush without time to propagandize we wouldn't see much partisan breakdown, the state list shows no pattern and if there were a strong partisan pattern it would show up in state legislatures. That seems to be the direction that more recently passed laws are going, I don't know the last time a state truly lowered the AoC.
We've definitely wind up with 18. My personal stance is that this is pretty stupid and 16 is fine but the incentives against arguing that publicly substantially outweigh any gain from just shrugging and saying, "well, there ya go I suppose".
Provided there's sufficient leeway for similarly aged young people to get together with their peers without the government getting involved, I don't really see what difference it makes on the margins between 15-19. I suppose there's some May-December, or April-August, marriages that get prevented; but that doesn't strike me as an overly tragic outcome.
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