Laws aren’t designed for individual exceptions, they’re based on the average or even lowest common denominator. My twelve year old is ready to drive a car, but most 12 year olds can’t, so he can’t legally.
MOST thirteen year olds are not emotionally mature by any extent of the imagination, which makes them more easily exploitable and impressionable. In medicine there’s something called informed consent and I think it’s applicable to age of consent as well.

But you know something, Liz? I don’t think this whole age of consent thing is as black and white as Americans would like for it to be. Society too often thinks that adolescent girls having relationships with males older than what their parents might normally approve of is something always doomed from the start, whereas same-age adolescent relationships can never go wrong. I beg to differ.

Take the example of actress Tippi Hedren who starred in the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds.” When her daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, was 13 years old, Tippi Hedren starred in a movie with then 22-year old actor Don Johnson back in the early 1970s. That is how Don Johnson met Melanie Griffith. Shortly thereafter, Melanie Griffith started dating Don Johnson despite their age difference. Much to her mother’s disapproval, when Melanie Griffith was 14 years old, she moved in with Don Johnson. Eventually Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith got married. Tippi Hedren could have pressed criminal charges against Don Johnson any time she wanted to, and he would have gone to prison on a conviction of “statutory rape” in that event and served many years behind bars. However, she didn’t, because, unlike many other American parents, she had at least the decency to talk things out with her daughter and not make any snap judgments that might have ruined her parental relationship with her daughter forever.

Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson’s relationship may not have been the most conventional one at first or perfect one, but they were together for a long, long time both on and off. They were even married at one point in their relationship as I mentioned previously. Even Oprah Winfrey expressed no objection to this relationship upon mentioning it to her audience, when she invited Melanie Griffith onto her TV talk show, which is quite rare on Oprah’s part, because she has always been so hell-bent on opposing adolescent girls being in relationships with adult men no matter how close in age difference they are, particularly ones that involve intimacy.

Then, on the other hand, you look at the fact that Macauley Culkin and Rachel Miner were both 17 years old when they got married in 1998. Everyone thought that they looked so cute together and would say, “Awwww. They grew up together. Don’t they make such a cute couple? Like two lovebirds in a tree. High school sweethearts in love.” Well, their marriage ended in disaster after 2 years (legally after 4 years). Macauley Culkin eventually became a train wreck, and since then Rachel Miner has been in mostly Class B roles where she either has played a trollop or a deranged individual. At one point, it was even rumored that Macauley Culkin had died two years ago, because he was so messed up on drugs. Now when you look at Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, even though they had their fair share of bumps on the road of life, they both have had very prosperous acting careers and they turned out pretty good. Macauley Culkin and Rachel Miner didn’t. So the point is, Liz, that the Puritanical establishment is not always right about these things, and people have the right to question the age of consent laws in our country.
Now people here in the United States of America have been making a big stink over this one couple over in the People’s Republic of China whose relationship began on similar circumstances as Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson. Two years ago when 24-year old Chinese pop singer, Zhang Muyi, began dating 12-year old Chinese-Canadian model Akama Miki, American news commentators were all over it and Americans were posting hateful remarks about it everywhere on the Internet. I mean, this couple lives clear on the other side of the world, and yet Americans are up in arms about them. This Chinese couple has one of the most formal courtships I’ve ever heard of, and yet accusations of moral turpitude are still flying at Zhang Muyi from all directions, mainly from Americans, even after two years that they’ve been together. How did so many Americans get to be this hostile about this sort of thing?

Everyone can’t marry their same-age high school sweetheart like Macauley Culkin did. And who would even want to be Macauley Culkin? His marriage to Rachel Miner represents the crassness and shallowness of many same-age adolescent relationships in the American culture. I mean, at least Zhang Muyi seems like he has more going on in the brains department than Macauley Culkin could ever have in a lifetime. Macauley Culkin is about as goofy in real life as he was in the movie “Home Alone.” If his aunt, actress Bonnie Bedelia, hadn’t been in show business to open doors for him in the entertainment industry when he was a little kid, his acting career would likely never have seen the light of day.

I don’t mean to rain on your parade, Liz. However, if you’re on a quest for an age-appropriate Utopia where adolescents can grow sexually with their own peers, I can guarantee you that you’ll never find it, because it doesn’t exist, except mostly in the minds of those who choose to go on living in a white picket fence fantasy world. Perhaps this logic worked back in 1957, but it doesn’t work anymore. And why would society even want go back to 1957? That was well before my time and most likely before your time. That decade’s value system has been obsolete for a long, long time. Call me a bleeding liberal if you must. However, whenever I come across a story like the one about the above Chinese couple, I find myself following the lyrics of this song here faithfully.>>>>Click onto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcowVi2AP-8
Also this song too.>>>>Click onto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wqGIwX8BG4

Finally, the criminal justice system has been given too much power and authority over the private lives of many people here in the United States of America. The Draconian age of consent laws in our country are greatly to blame for it. At the same time, the real criminals are getting away with everything under the sun, because they have the entire system figured out and the system has been allowed to spread itself too thin in society’s efforts to make us into this perfect civilization that resembles a re-run of “Father Knows Best” or “Leave It To Beaver.” As much as I regret to say it, it’s the truth.