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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
Nobody will be willing to advocate for anything other than 18 with a shotgun wedding exception, most like.
Right now yeah, but as things are I can see some frustrations that might be able to set the stage for future agitation to finally stop the advancing postponement of adulthood. (By the time my sister felt "ready" to have kids she was pressing up against a geriatric pregnancy.) Right now the biggest rhetorical weapon against young adults is this idea that your brain isn't finished developing until 25.
Maybe more research discovers that this delayed development is of no real use. Maybe we recognize that most things we ask adults to take responsibility for do not require that your brain reach some state we can only even notice with brain scans. Maybe we suddenly remember that, oh, not long after 25 your brain starts un-developing and we don't gradually strip legal privileges of people as they age (unless it causes the failure of some qualification, e.g. driver's license, but age will not per se disqualify you!).
Eighteen is the compromise between ‘c’mon now, teenagers obviously need the guidance of their elders’ and ‘they can’t stay kids forever’ we’ve already settled on as a society. Is it intrinsically better than 16? Only by already being established. For that reason I don’t see that changing.
Eighteen was not an organic compromise as you imply it was. It was borne of the top-down imposition of California's own culture, where the age is 18, through its worldwide reach in media. Arkansas's age of consent is 16 and could just as easily convince you that 16 was "the compromise" if we let them control what the world watched in its living rooms for several decades.
Yes, I just said that 16 as the generally agreed upon compromise is not clearly worse than 18. It simply happens that one is generally agreed upon and the other is not. But, well, something has to be generally agreed upon.
What I responded to:
I explained why I thought maybe that could change one day. To which you respond no, it won't change. To which I disagreed. I don't dispute here that "something has to be generally agreed upon."
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