America's sex laws: unjust and ineffective

First, I find this as disgusting as you. But I’m going to take the unpopular side here and point out that, in an imperfect world, this is how things have to work.

Let me explain my point. Politicians often aren’t the brightest bulbs in the set. They are people who can convince a lot of other people to like them which makes most the equivalent of good con men. So after they’re elected they tend not to think things through and make simplistic laws like “Any adult performing any sex act on a minor is guilty” (which of course ignores the 17 year old having consensual sex with the 15 year old in high school). But there are checks on a law’s power. Cops and Judges both have discretion for this very reason. But sometimes the system fails and you get lazy cops, a lazy judge and a lazy prosecutor who all don’t care enough to do their job. Then you end up with the situation quoted in the first part of this article.

But here’s the thing: Yes, I think it’s unjust and I think the politicians, lawyer, judge, cops, etc... in this story are all deplorable fools. But the world will always have deplorable fools and only when someone’s burned by them do the rest of us realize something’s wrong so we can fix it. As the article points out the law that got this woman into trouble no longer exists because people saw the abuse and demanded it be changed.

So one person suffers but thousands of others won’t in the future. I wish that one person didn’t have to suffer but it’s inherent in a system where the primary skill of our elected officials is “likability” rather than “intelligence”