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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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I was trying to find the citation for my anecdotal example I wanted to use, to, kinda sorta, back you on this, but alas it's one of these things I saw on one of the zillions of 3 hour podcasts I listen to daily, and cant locate easily anymore, so ultimately the source is: trust me, bro.

So there was this interview I was listening to with some sweet old lady recounting her life as some sort of activist. Unrelated to the main topic of the conversation, she mentioned how her husband started courting her when she was 16 or so, and he was 20-something*, exactly the sort of relationship that you seem to argue for here. My first reaction was "yikes", but through the interview she seemed to have nothing but love and respect for her husband, and she also mentioned they had something like 5 kids together, and each of them had a lot of kids in turn, so she's now surrounded by approximately 7 zillion grandchildren and great-grandchildren. At the end of it, I found it hard to say this was all somehow wrong.

*) Or he might have actually waited until she turned 18, but he was definitely orbiting her since she was in her mid-teens.

That said, for something like this to work, I think the conversation has to be a lot bigger than "age of consent", and basically you'd have to RETVRN to traditional sexual mores: no sex before marriage, no divorce, the parents have to co-sign the relationship. I think a lot of the "ick factor" comes from people assuming the 20-something is just looking for sex - which is a reasonable assumption - and the the 15 year old girl is naive, and easily taken advantage of - which is another reasonable assumption. If, on the other hand, we assume the guy is looking for love and for a way to start a family... well I'm sure lots of people would still complain, but I think it's more defensible than lowering the age of consent, and normalizing big age-gap relationships with the current sexual mores in effect.

young men get a felony if they resist losing half of their dating pool to high age of consent

Really? Half of the dating pool is aged fifteen and under? The only way 20 year old Deep can get a girlfriend is to hang around 13 year olds?

Do you hear what you are saying?