Yeah, and thats why I wanna move BEFORE theyre old and saggy!

In Texas you are legally allowed to have sex with any age (no more than 3 or 4yrs your junior) at the age of 17. I think you are allowed to have sex w/ parental consent between 13 to 16, and its illegal under 13.

Not quite. Your parents can consent to your marriage, and then you may have sex with (only) your spouse even if you are underage, but they cannot consent to an illegal act.

www.ageofconsent.com will tell you the exact law in every state and country.

Didn't something regarding this come up in the news recently? Something about how some parents wanted to press charges on a 19yo girl for having sex with their 15yo son or something along those lines. The state refused to press charges even though they pointed out that the act was illegal under the written law even if no one really calls people on it. The idea of 'the spirit of the law' is BS in my opinion. There is what the law says, and what it does not say, both of which can be determined from what is written in the book and nowhere else. None of this "well that's not what it says, but it's what it means" crap. Or "but it wasn't intended to cover cases like that", well guess someone should've written a claus in there huh? If the law doesn't actually say what it's supposed to do then we have some incompetant politicians/lawers who need their names published.

right on.

There's a thing called "legislative history" that goes along with a law. When there is room for interpretation in a law, you can go look up what was discussed about the law by the lawmakers as it was being passed. You get their intent from that. The court should look at the legislative history if there is ever any ambiguity about how a law should be applied. A good lawyer will use that too.

My point is that there isn't that room for interpretation involved. If the law says something then that's what you have to go by, if the law is poorly written and doesn't cover all the bases then you need to change the law on the books. None of this precident crap, if people think a law has become outdated or doesn't include circumstances that are relevant now then you need to rewrite the law. Otherwise you open the entire thing to corruption from 'interpretations' and 'extrapolations' that really arn't appropriate.

Sure, in theory that's a good idea, but in reality, it's very difficult to write a law so that it applies to all situations the way you want it to. That's why there is the concept of case law (precidential court decisions related to your situation) and legislative history when there are ambiguities in the actual law and case law.

Look at the RICO laws that were passed to fight the mafia. They are being stretched by aggressive prosecutors to cover things like the hiring practices of recruiting agencies.

The law is very messy.

The goal of a just society should not be to hurt people by imposing stiff definitions.

You don't seriously think that's the way the legal system works do you?:eyebrow:
Our courts have about as much to do with truth and justice as my choice in bagels this morning had to do with the congressional debates.

Mmmm...congressional bagels...

Notwithstanding this being the case, shouldn't we even try to do a good job?
A system is initially designed to do something, other than trudge ahead, mechanically.

It was designed to deliver justice according to the people it served. Now it serves a population that understands little to nothing about what goes on around them and cares about that deficiency even less. One of my favorite quotes is "Democracy ensures that people will be governed no better then they deserve", and it retains its meaning if you change it to "Our laws ensure that society will receive the justice it deserves". Only problem is that we have been taught that what we deserve is not dependent on our abilities.

Dude...okay that's great. Now, back to the topic: should laws be unreasonably inflexible, to the point of failing to apply to reality?

or, to put it another way, if the majority of the population do it and want it, should it be illegal?