Under Michigan law and the laws of other states in which the generic age of consent is 16 but sex with 15-year-old’s is a felony, it’s legal for adult men ages 18 to 80 to have sex with girls the moment the clock strikes 12AM on their 16th birthdays if they aren’t in a position of authority over them. And, apparently, this includes those convicted of violent and other mala in se felonies, even dozens or scores of them, but who’ve never been convicted of a sexual offense. (I’m not sure of this but, so far, internet searches have not answered my questions.)

But, in Michigan, a 20-year-old woman who has sex with a young man a day or hour or minute before he turns 16 is guilty of “third-degree criminal sexual conduct,” a felony with a maximum sentence of 6-15 years in prison and all the extra/post incarceration punishments, including registration for life or at least 20-30 years as a uniquely monstrous and degenerate criminals, theoretically more dangerous than myriads of brutes and savages with histories of crime beginning at age 13 or 14 or 15 who’ve committed dozens and scores of violent and other mala in se crimes but who’ve never been convicted of a sexual offense albeit most of them have surely raped and/or gang-raped men in jails and prisons and/or women and girls in the “free world.”

And if the woman is in a position of authority over him, a teacher or tutor, like Abigail Simon and Kathryn Ronk, she’s guilty of “first-degree criminal sexual conduct,” punishable by a mandatory-minimum of 8-25 years in prison and a maximum sentence of 25-years to life and a lifetime of public sex-offender registration and electronic parole monitoring with a ankle-tether/”bracelet -if, like Abigail, one spurns a number of plea-bargains and  is convicted at trial of first-degree CSC., even one “count” rather than several.

Clearly, if de facto consensual sex between 15-year-olds and adult men and women is so heinous a crime that those who aren’t in positions of authority over them are guilty of “third-degree criminal sexual conduct” and subject to all the penalties above, and those who are in positions of authority over them could be sentenced to 25-years to life in prison and a lifetime of draconian/Orwellian persecution, then how can sex between 16-year-olds and adults not in positions of authority over them be legal?

And, conversely, if consensual sex between 16-year-olds and adults not in positions of power over them is legal -even, apparently, for violent and/or recidivist criminals who’ve never been convicted of a sexual offense- then how can adult men and women who have sex with 15-year-olds be charged with felonies and sentenced to months in jail or years in prison and all the other draconian/Orwellian punishments? And how can Abigail Simon be sentenced to 8-25 years in prison and a lifetime of public sex-offender registration and electronic parole monitoring?

What’s the difference between the average 16-year-old and the average 15-year-old? Virtually nothing, generally, and in respect to sexuality, absolutely nothing. Moreover, there are millions of 14- and 15-year-olds who are more or far more intelligent, mature, and sexually experienced, sophisticated, and “active” than millions of 16- and 17-year-old’s. To say nothing of the differences, physically and psychologically, between the sexes.

Clearly, to those of us who are sane and just and rational, if factually consensual sex between 16-year-olds and adults not in positions of authority over them is legal but sex between adults and young men and women under age 16 must be criminalized, as I concede for the sake of argument, then I would argue that such acts be criminalized not as felonies but as misdemeanors -at least for adults who’ve never been convicted of violent and other mala in se crimes– and a sentence of probation should be mandatory for all first-offenders: 3-6 months of probation with perhaps 50-100 hours of some kind of “community service,” but without the current restrictions on freedoms and intrusions into private lives that don’t apply to violent recidivists who’ve never been convicted of a sexual offense; no prison, no jail, no electronic parole monitoring, no public sex-offender registration; and no”sex-offender treatment”: years of psycho-therapy, usually by quacks and zealots and psychotics, and often iatrogenic, to “treat” the offenders for what precisely, what perversion,”paraphilia,”or “disorder,” heterosexuality?

All jurisdictions from nations to states must have an age of consent -whether 16 or 17 or 18 as in all U.S. states, or 14 or 15 as in many other nations, including European countries, or 13 in some nations, including Spain until just recently, or 12 as in Mexico- and some degree of arbitrariness and inequity and hair-splitting is ineluctable -but this is insane.