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Well we can look at the facts, which are that since the 1980s gay rights have become widely accepted, gay marriage legalized across the West; homophobia seriously reduced, and yet at the same time ages of consent have risen (substantially in parts of Canada and Europe), punishments for abuse of children have hugely increased, many more people are in jail for these crimes, and - perhaps most significantly - it’s much less socially acceptable for a 25 or 30 year old man to have a 15/16 year old girlfriend in 2023 than it was in 1973 or 1993. That’s a good thing (in my opinion), but it suggests that things are moving further against the direction you suggest is likely.
Ages of consent may have risen, but we're much more accepting of sexual activity at younger ages. Think of "Romeo and Juliet" laws, or the constant tub-thumping over "we must teach sex education at [age whatever] because by age [a couple years more] they're going to be experimenting with sex". That used to be "by sixteen", now it seems to be trending down to "by twelve".
While repugnance around thirty year old man has sex with six year old child will persist, I'm not so sure that "thirty year old man has sex with sixteen year old" will. After all, if some are pushing to reduce the voting age to sixteen, and we accept that a sixteen year old can have a twenty year old boyfriend, then that means we think 'legal minor' may indeed be mature enough to decide such things.
I'm not saying it'll be easy or fast, but I do think there will be a swing back, as with many things, so that the rise in age and the reset of it that you mention may be seen as an over-reaction, and we must correct in the opposite direction, so if Judy is seventeen and eight months of age, why shouldn't she legally be able to have a relationship with thirty year old Tom, what magic happens with waiting just another four months for her to be legally adult at eighteen?
Sex education works at reducing teenage sex and pregnancies, as advertised, by emphasizing the consequences of having sex. If you wanted to encourage teenage sex you wouldn't tell them anything and let nature take its course.
This is ironic because your second scenario is legal in most of the world, including most of the US and has always been so and in the places where it isn't it's because of feminist campaigning.
The progressive movement that exists today is overwhelmingly sex negative: they are in favor of raising the age of consent (to 25), against age gaps, against workplace relationships, against flirting in public, or in bars, or everywhere except designated dating apps, against prostitution, against pornography (except onlyfans), against sex comedies, against sexy women in video games, against revealing clothing in movies.
Play some of the wokesploitation games (Dream Daddy, Goodbye Volcano High), for example: everyone is some kind of queer but no sex, not even hinted at, maybe a (one) kiss, maybe the farthest they get is holding hands.
The trans kids stuff is the second most successful mass sterilization project in the world. Puberty blockers likely cause permanent inability to orgasm, what has your church done that's as effective as that at preventing teenage sex?
The progressive movement that exists today can be summarized as "Straight male sexuality bad, everything else good!". They are in favor of raising the age of consent, but deny that women actually need to get consent from men. They are against age gaps, but deny behavior of older women toward younger men is sexual. They are against men flirting with women unless the women desire it, but think women should be free to flirt with men whenever they wish. They are against any media that panders to the sexual desires of straight men, but are okay with media that panders to the sexual desires of others.
"Sex positivity" has always been tied up in Feminism and thus has always only cared about ensuring sexual outcomes are positive for women.
Sex postive feminists existed at one point, it's just that after they lost the feminist sex wars, the sex negs flayed them and wore their skin to hide their puritanical, hypocritical nature.
Sex positive feminists won the feminist sex wars though. Sex positive feminists were never supportive of male sexuality except so far as it could be exploited by women.
No, that's what "they" say. My conspiracy theory is that the sex positive feminists actually lost. Modern feminists do not like porn and prostitution. They are very fond of sex negative terms like rape culture and objectification.
I think you are misunderstanding what "sex positive" and "sex negative" refer to. The schism between the two groups basically revolves around how one answers the question "Is heterosexual sex oppressive of women?". Sex negative feminists hold that it is and thus heterosexual sex must be eschewed, leading to things like political lesbianism. Sex positive feminists hold that it is not necessarily oppressive and that women should be free engage their sexuality so long as it is empowering to them. Sex positive feminists still often oppose the sexual objectification of women because it is not empowering. That doesn't make them sex negative however.
I don't think anyone self-describes as "sex-negative", and I kind of agree with the "skinsuit" theory on what "sex-positive" means in practice, i.e. feminists feel a need to publicly identify that way whether or not it actually fits. Even from feminists who self-describe that way, the overwhelming majority of the messaging seems to be "sex hurts" and ideas about "rape culture" et al that I would characterize as extremely paranoid. (Granted, I'm mostly around people with upper-middle-class values where sexual violence is quite rare and any appearance otherwise is largely an artefact of expanding the definition beyond reasonable limits. But so are most feminists. These are mostly academic-adjacent notions we're talking about here.) When I deal with these people I'm constantly asking, or at least thinking, "If you're so sex-positive, why do you never seem to have anything positive to say about sex?"
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