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In a recent revert, @ User Yo uheman221q2w3e4r5t: defends a revert, stating "secondary sources take priority by wiki standards and since all of them say 43.25 is for performance then it should be left alone." However, "secondary source" does not imply a highly reliable source, and "primary source" does not imply a less reliable source.
The only way to reach a determination that's contrary to Dornbusch (aside from a legislative change to the statute) is a subsequent ruling overturning Dornbusch by an appellate or higher court. Fabrickator ( talk) 18:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Ok you know what, since apparently Inducement is the key lets actually go into what the court actually stated about inducement in Dornbusch.
"To decide Dornbusch s constitutional challenge, we must determine whether, in common understanding, Dornbusch s alleged conduct brought about V.V. s sexual conduct through persuasion or influence. See Markovich, 77 S.W.3d at 280; Brennman, 45 S.W.3d at 732. It is uncontested that Dornbusch was substantially older than V.V. Also, as an educator at her high school, Dornbusch was in a position of authority over V.V. According to the State s evidence, appellant requested that V.V. and J.R. accompany him on errands away from campus; provided the girls with alcohol, even though they were both minors; drove them to an out-of-town motel on his own initiative; urged them to undress and enter the hot tub with him; and made unsolicited sexual advances in the hot tub and on the motel room bed. In sum, Dornbusch constructed a situation in which V.V. was unlikely to have the ability to refuse his advances: she was miles away from school (where she was supposed to be) and her only alternative to acquiescing to Dornbusch s advances was to call someone to pick her up from an out-of-town motel, after she had consumed alcohol in the middle of a school day. We conclude that a scenario such as this, where a person of authority creates a situation in which a teenager would find it almost impossible to deny a sexual advance, can be fairly considered to constitute inducement in the common understanding of the term. See Markovich, 77 S.W.3d at 280.
We hold that the statute was not impermissibly vague as applied to Dornbusch s conduct. The statute forbids inducement of sexual conduct by a child under eighteen years of age, and according to the State s evidence, Dornbusch did exactly that: he induced (he used persuasion and influence to bring about) V.V. s sexual conduct. See 43.25(b)"
Later on the court reiterated this in denying another point. "We disagree. The proof of guilt is not outweighed by the exonerative evidence cited by Dornbusch. Regardless of whether V.V. consented to the sexual conduct or if Dornbusch never promised her anything in return for sex, the evidence still shows that Dornbusch induced V.V. s sexual conduct by using his position of authority to create a situation in which V.V. was afraid or unable to refuse his sexual advances. Dornbusch seems to read the word induce as meaning force, but we do not equate the terms."
The Dornbusch court also does not foreclose 43.25 being inapplicable for the purposes of sexual conduct if the seventeen year old in question propositioned the adult for sex, simply stating they couldn't rule on it as it was not relevant to the case.
"Dornbusch argues that when considered together, sections 21.11 and 43.25(b) would allow an adult to have legal sex with a seventeen-year-old if the minor initiates the sexual conduct, while an adult who asks a seventeen-year-old for sex could be prosecuted for inducement. See 21.11, 43.25(b). Dornbusch asserts that it is absurd for him to be convicted based on which party initially requested the sexual contact as long as both parties consented.
As a preliminary matter, the evidence does not indicate that Dornbusch was propositioned for sex. To the contrary, the evidence strongly indicates that Dornbusch initiated and induced the sexual conduct. Thus, the instant case does not require this Court to determine whether a criminal offense occurs if a minor initiates sexual contact with an adult."
Remember Dornbusch is a 2005 ruling, Ex Parte Fujisaka was decided in 2015, where the court did explicitly state Seventeen is the age of consent and that 43.25 only criminalizes the act of "inducement".
"Because seventeen years is the age of consent to sexual relations in Texas, and thus speech incidental to such relations would not be categorically excluded from protection under the First Amendment, we agree with appellant that application of section 43.25(b) to the authorization or inducement of seventeen-year-old children to engage in sexual conduct or a sexual performance is the most problematic application of the statute. However, the set of applications where the regulation is problematic is narrowed drastically by the removal of cases involving only conduct as inducement, cases where the speech seeks to induce a criminal act, the statute's scienter requirement that the inducement occur "knowing the character and content thereof," and the affirmative defenses incorporated into the statute. We conclude for the vast majority of its potential applications, section 43.25(b) does not raise issues of constitutional dimension. "
Therefore read together the only act that is unlawful at the very most is an adult inducing a seventeen year old to have sex, which in the facts of the Dornbusch case, the inducement in question was his undue influence. Thegunkid ( talk) 08:06, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
The lead paragraph of Ages of consent in the United States emphasizes the diversity of jurisdictions in the United States, each with its own set of rules to determine what constitutes lawful and unlawful sexual contact. Notably, the final sentence of the paragraph asserts that civil and criminal laws in a given state may even conflict with each other, possibly leading some to believe that, since conflicting laws could not concurrently be valid, the law must be unconstitutionally vague or otherwise unenforceable.
To make matters worse, for readers who bother to check the footnote for this statement, they will discover it refers to a 2013 paper with a title indicating that the end of the age of consent has been "confirmed" in California.
In spite of the above, California law enforcement officials have continued to charge and prosecute people for "sex with a minor", so evidently, California has not yet reached "the end of the age of consent".
From my perusal of the referenced paper, the focus seems to be court rulings to the effect that minors who are the victims of underage sex by an older person cannot automatically sustain a civil tort against the perpetrator, assuming that the sex was consensual, and therefore the underage sex could not have been a crime to begin with.
The inclusion of this statement in the article, along with its accompanying footnote, is misleading to the reader. I therefore suggest that it ought to be removed. I'd like to hear opinions from others, one way or the other. Fabrickator ( talk) 08:32, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
Effective with the revision of 17:24, 6 June 2022, the legend on the map of the U.S. was changed from stating that it shows the general age of consent to state that it shows the minimum age of consent for each state. These can't both be true, so was it right before, or is it right now? Fabrickator ( talk) 05:56, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
The table gives 21 as the unrestricted age of consent, but this is contradicted elsewhere in the article. Chemical Engineer ( talk) 16:59, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Creating a truth table from law.The discussion is about the topic topic. Thank you. -- Subanark ( talk) 06:20, 20 May 2024 (UTC) (subsection title added to allow links to work following correction of section name)
The part with: "Washington State will not prosecute [people] based on age if [they] have sex with" is language from https://doh.wa.gov/you-and-your-family/sexual-and-reproductive-health/state-laws which is no longer active (and was only active for about 1/2 a year). Since this page appears to be authoritative, its removal may indicate that it has retracted its position. Subanark ( talk) 18:41, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
@ Subanark: Your source is based on the old law. You can find a description of the new law at Introducing Washington State Laws, which has a creation date of November 2020. Under this law, there is an absolute prohibition on sex for anybody under age 16. The 5-year limit on age difference applies for someone who's age 16 or 17 and with anybody who's under age 16. As far as the age of your partner, for someone who's age 16 or 17, there's a limit of 5-years on how much older your partner can be, which would presumably be based on the actual dates of birth.
There are some other sites that will say that the 5-year age restriction only applies to those who are in a "special relationship" (e.g. having a teacher-student relationship), but my impression is that this is a provision from the old law that has been misconstrued to apply under the new law.
In the past, I have suggested that we should post a big disclaimer about the risks of relying on Wikipedia's age of consent laws (I believe I actually added it to the article), but I was shouted down, on the grounds that Wikipedia already has a generic disclaimer. I will tell you which side I will vote on if I'm on the jury... If you run a website and describe how you base content on reliable sources, you offer " legal information" on this site which specifically applies to young persons, and they wind up being charged with a serious crime.
This is a foreseeable problem, and I'm not letting Wikipedia hide behind this generic disclaimer. I'm obviously not in charge, but I'm not making these edits either. Fabrickator ( talk) 03:42, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
@ Subanark: I'm going to go back to this line of yours:
... the line "Washington State will not prosecute you based on age if you have sex with:" indicates that while it is still illegal, it is not enforced under certain cases.
So maybe we should review the concept of what's legal and what's illegal, with respect to any given statute. It sounds like you're starting with the premise that the age of consent was 16, therefore, sex with a partner under age 16 would necessarily be illegal. But your view on this is that there is a particular "age of consent", and therefore, any sex which involves at least one person who's under the age of consent, then there's at least one person who's violating the law.
As it happens, the state legislatures are not constrained to this simple model. They can use arbitrary combinations of facts to specify whether any of the parties involved are subject to prosecution. They can even define certain terms in the law but apply those terms in counter-intuitive ways.
However, the fact is that under the laws that I linked to, they defined specific statutes for the different age ranges (actually, these statutes defined age gaps depending on the age range of the younger party). Even if the law stated that 16 was the "general age of consent", that only makes sex with someone under age 16 illegal if it includes verbiage to the effect that such sex is illegal.
What the law actually says (in part) is that if the younger party is under age 12, then the sex is illegal only if the other party is at least 2 years older. So (if I am recalling correctly) sex between an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old would have been legal since a person age 9 years and 11 month is less than 2 years older than someone who's just reached the age of 8 years. On the other hand, sex between an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old is illegal because the age difference is at least 2 years.
Under each of the 3 laws listed, there's a permissible age gap that depends on the age of the younger person. Sex between parties in two different age ranges is legal or illegal depending on the age difference. This is not some kind of discretionary determination not to prosecute even though it's illegal, it's specifically not illegal because of the permissible age difference.
I don't think this should be a difficult concept to grasp, but it greatly concerns me that you are offering your interpretations when you don't get this fairly straightforward concept. Fabrickator ( talk) 08:19, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
table showing ages of permissible sexual contact
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Subanark ( talk) 15:15, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
Ages of consent in the United States received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article. |
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Ages of consent in the United States article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2Auto-archiving period: 365 days |
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||
This page has archives. Sections older than 365 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
In a recent revert, @ User Yo uheman221q2w3e4r5t: defends a revert, stating "secondary sources take priority by wiki standards and since all of them say 43.25 is for performance then it should be left alone." However, "secondary source" does not imply a highly reliable source, and "primary source" does not imply a less reliable source.
The only way to reach a determination that's contrary to Dornbusch (aside from a legislative change to the statute) is a subsequent ruling overturning Dornbusch by an appellate or higher court. Fabrickator ( talk) 18:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Ok you know what, since apparently Inducement is the key lets actually go into what the court actually stated about inducement in Dornbusch.
"To decide Dornbusch s constitutional challenge, we must determine whether, in common understanding, Dornbusch s alleged conduct brought about V.V. s sexual conduct through persuasion or influence. See Markovich, 77 S.W.3d at 280; Brennman, 45 S.W.3d at 732. It is uncontested that Dornbusch was substantially older than V.V. Also, as an educator at her high school, Dornbusch was in a position of authority over V.V. According to the State s evidence, appellant requested that V.V. and J.R. accompany him on errands away from campus; provided the girls with alcohol, even though they were both minors; drove them to an out-of-town motel on his own initiative; urged them to undress and enter the hot tub with him; and made unsolicited sexual advances in the hot tub and on the motel room bed. In sum, Dornbusch constructed a situation in which V.V. was unlikely to have the ability to refuse his advances: she was miles away from school (where she was supposed to be) and her only alternative to acquiescing to Dornbusch s advances was to call someone to pick her up from an out-of-town motel, after she had consumed alcohol in the middle of a school day. We conclude that a scenario such as this, where a person of authority creates a situation in which a teenager would find it almost impossible to deny a sexual advance, can be fairly considered to constitute inducement in the common understanding of the term. See Markovich, 77 S.W.3d at 280.
We hold that the statute was not impermissibly vague as applied to Dornbusch s conduct. The statute forbids inducement of sexual conduct by a child under eighteen years of age, and according to the State s evidence, Dornbusch did exactly that: he induced (he used persuasion and influence to bring about) V.V. s sexual conduct. See 43.25(b)"
Later on the court reiterated this in denying another point. "We disagree. The proof of guilt is not outweighed by the exonerative evidence cited by Dornbusch. Regardless of whether V.V. consented to the sexual conduct or if Dornbusch never promised her anything in return for sex, the evidence still shows that Dornbusch induced V.V. s sexual conduct by using his position of authority to create a situation in which V.V. was afraid or unable to refuse his sexual advances. Dornbusch seems to read the word induce as meaning force, but we do not equate the terms."
The Dornbusch court also does not foreclose 43.25 being inapplicable for the purposes of sexual conduct if the seventeen year old in question propositioned the adult for sex, simply stating they couldn't rule on it as it was not relevant to the case.
"Dornbusch argues that when considered together, sections 21.11 and 43.25(b) would allow an adult to have legal sex with a seventeen-year-old if the minor initiates the sexual conduct, while an adult who asks a seventeen-year-old for sex could be prosecuted for inducement. See 21.11, 43.25(b). Dornbusch asserts that it is absurd for him to be convicted based on which party initially requested the sexual contact as long as both parties consented.
As a preliminary matter, the evidence does not indicate that Dornbusch was propositioned for sex. To the contrary, the evidence strongly indicates that Dornbusch initiated and induced the sexual conduct. Thus, the instant case does not require this Court to determine whether a criminal offense occurs if a minor initiates sexual contact with an adult."
Remember Dornbusch is a 2005 ruling, Ex Parte Fujisaka was decided in 2015, where the court did explicitly state Seventeen is the age of consent and that 43.25 only criminalizes the act of "inducement".
"Because seventeen years is the age of consent to sexual relations in Texas, and thus speech incidental to such relations would not be categorically excluded from protection under the First Amendment, we agree with appellant that application of section 43.25(b) to the authorization or inducement of seventeen-year-old children to engage in sexual conduct or a sexual performance is the most problematic application of the statute. However, the set of applications where the regulation is problematic is narrowed drastically by the removal of cases involving only conduct as inducement, cases where the speech seeks to induce a criminal act, the statute's scienter requirement that the inducement occur "knowing the character and content thereof," and the affirmative defenses incorporated into the statute. We conclude for the vast majority of its potential applications, section 43.25(b) does not raise issues of constitutional dimension. "
Therefore read together the only act that is unlawful at the very most is an adult inducing a seventeen year old to have sex, which in the facts of the Dornbusch case, the inducement in question was his undue influence. Thegunkid ( talk) 08:06, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
The lead paragraph of Ages of consent in the United States emphasizes the diversity of jurisdictions in the United States, each with its own set of rules to determine what constitutes lawful and unlawful sexual contact. Notably, the final sentence of the paragraph asserts that civil and criminal laws in a given state may even conflict with each other, possibly leading some to believe that, since conflicting laws could not concurrently be valid, the law must be unconstitutionally vague or otherwise unenforceable.
To make matters worse, for readers who bother to check the footnote for this statement, they will discover it refers to a 2013 paper with a title indicating that the end of the age of consent has been "confirmed" in California.
In spite of the above, California law enforcement officials have continued to charge and prosecute people for "sex with a minor", so evidently, California has not yet reached "the end of the age of consent".
From my perusal of the referenced paper, the focus seems to be court rulings to the effect that minors who are the victims of underage sex by an older person cannot automatically sustain a civil tort against the perpetrator, assuming that the sex was consensual, and therefore the underage sex could not have been a crime to begin with.
The inclusion of this statement in the article, along with its accompanying footnote, is misleading to the reader. I therefore suggest that it ought to be removed. I'd like to hear opinions from others, one way or the other. Fabrickator ( talk) 08:32, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
Effective with the revision of 17:24, 6 June 2022, the legend on the map of the U.S. was changed from stating that it shows the general age of consent to state that it shows the minimum age of consent for each state. These can't both be true, so was it right before, or is it right now? Fabrickator ( talk) 05:56, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
The table gives 21 as the unrestricted age of consent, but this is contradicted elsewhere in the article. Chemical Engineer ( talk) 16:59, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Creating a truth table from law.The discussion is about the topic topic. Thank you. -- Subanark ( talk) 06:20, 20 May 2024 (UTC) (subsection title added to allow links to work following correction of section name)
The part with: "Washington State will not prosecute [people] based on age if [they] have sex with" is language from https://doh.wa.gov/you-and-your-family/sexual-and-reproductive-health/state-laws which is no longer active (and was only active for about 1/2 a year). Since this page appears to be authoritative, its removal may indicate that it has retracted its position. Subanark ( talk) 18:41, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
@ Subanark: Your source is based on the old law. You can find a description of the new law at Introducing Washington State Laws, which has a creation date of November 2020. Under this law, there is an absolute prohibition on sex for anybody under age 16. The 5-year limit on age difference applies for someone who's age 16 or 17 and with anybody who's under age 16. As far as the age of your partner, for someone who's age 16 or 17, there's a limit of 5-years on how much older your partner can be, which would presumably be based on the actual dates of birth.
There are some other sites that will say that the 5-year age restriction only applies to those who are in a "special relationship" (e.g. having a teacher-student relationship), but my impression is that this is a provision from the old law that has been misconstrued to apply under the new law.
In the past, I have suggested that we should post a big disclaimer about the risks of relying on Wikipedia's age of consent laws (I believe I actually added it to the article), but I was shouted down, on the grounds that Wikipedia already has a generic disclaimer. I will tell you which side I will vote on if I'm on the jury... If you run a website and describe how you base content on reliable sources, you offer " legal information" on this site which specifically applies to young persons, and they wind up being charged with a serious crime.
This is a foreseeable problem, and I'm not letting Wikipedia hide behind this generic disclaimer. I'm obviously not in charge, but I'm not making these edits either. Fabrickator ( talk) 03:42, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
@ Subanark: I'm going to go back to this line of yours:
... the line "Washington State will not prosecute you based on age if you have sex with:" indicates that while it is still illegal, it is not enforced under certain cases.
So maybe we should review the concept of what's legal and what's illegal, with respect to any given statute. It sounds like you're starting with the premise that the age of consent was 16, therefore, sex with a partner under age 16 would necessarily be illegal. But your view on this is that there is a particular "age of consent", and therefore, any sex which involves at least one person who's under the age of consent, then there's at least one person who's violating the law.
As it happens, the state legislatures are not constrained to this simple model. They can use arbitrary combinations of facts to specify whether any of the parties involved are subject to prosecution. They can even define certain terms in the law but apply those terms in counter-intuitive ways.
However, the fact is that under the laws that I linked to, they defined specific statutes for the different age ranges (actually, these statutes defined age gaps depending on the age range of the younger party). Even if the law stated that 16 was the "general age of consent", that only makes sex with someone under age 16 illegal if it includes verbiage to the effect that such sex is illegal.
What the law actually says (in part) is that if the younger party is under age 12, then the sex is illegal only if the other party is at least 2 years older. So (if I am recalling correctly) sex between an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old would have been legal since a person age 9 years and 11 month is less than 2 years older than someone who's just reached the age of 8 years. On the other hand, sex between an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old is illegal because the age difference is at least 2 years.
Under each of the 3 laws listed, there's a permissible age gap that depends on the age of the younger person. Sex between parties in two different age ranges is legal or illegal depending on the age difference. This is not some kind of discretionary determination not to prosecute even though it's illegal, it's specifically not illegal because of the permissible age difference.
I don't think this should be a difficult concept to grasp, but it greatly concerns me that you are offering your interpretations when you don't get this fairly straightforward concept. Fabrickator ( talk) 08:19, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
table showing ages of permissible sexual contact
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Subanark ( talk) 15:15, 17 May 2024 (UTC)