Still, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals boasts three different ages of consent — Indiana: 16, Illinois: 193, and Wisconsin: 18.
|
|
The laws of Denmark, where applicable, apply. See Ages of consent in Europe#Denmark.
|
|
The laws of France where applicable apply. (These specify a general age of consent of 15.) See Ages of consent in Europe#France.
|
|
While the general ages of consent are now set between 16 and 18 in all U.S. states, the age of consent has widely varied across the country in the past. In 1880, the ages of consent were set at 10 or 12 in most states, with the exception of Delaware where it was 7. The ages of consent were raised across the U.S. during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. By 1920, 26 states had an age of consent at 16, 21 states had an age of consent at 18, and one state (Georgia) had an age of consent at 14.
|
|
The ages of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts in Scotland were eventually equalised at 16 with the passage of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000.
|
|
The ages of consent in the countries of Central America range from 14 to 18\. The below is a list of all jurisdictions in North America as listed in List of sovereign states and dependent territories in North America.
|
|
In 1996, the European Court of Human Rights heard Morris v. The United Kingdom and Sutherland v. the United Kingdom, cases brought by Chris Morris and Euan Sutherland challenging the inequality inherent in divided ages of consent. The government stated its intention to legislate to negate the court cases, which were put on hold.
|
|
Even after the 1918 law changes, Georgia still had the lowest age of consent in the country, because all 47 other states had already raised their ages of consent to 16 or 18. The Georgia age of consent remained at 14 until 1995, when a bill proposed by Steve Langford to make 16 the age of consent passed.
|
|
Two final states legislating their ages of consent into the 15–18 range were Georgia and Hawaii, from 14 to 16, raised in 1995 and 2001, respectively. One state (Colorado) had the age of consent at 15, having been lowered from 18 years old because age of majority was lowered from 21 years old to 18 years old in 1971.
|
|
Albania decriminalized consensual sexual expression in 1995. The age of consent has been equal at 14 for all, regardless of gender and/or sexual orientation, since 2001. (see: Ages of consent in Europe). In the summer of 1994 the Government of Albania put forward a draft Penal code under which homosexuality would have remained illegal, but with the maximum sentence reduced to three years.
|
|
At the end of 1984, the trio released an album titled The Age of Consent. The inner sleeve listed the varying ages of consent for consensual gay sex in different nations around the world. At the time, the age of consent for sexual acts between men in the UK was 21 compared with 16 for heterosexual acts, with several other countries having more liberal laws on gay sex.
|
|
Western Australia did the same in 1989.Law Reform (Decriminalization of Sodomy) Act 1989 The states and territories that retained different ages of consent or other vestiges of sodomy laws later began to repeal them: Western Australia did so in 2002, and New South Wales and the Northern Territory did so in 2003. Tasmania decriminalised sodomy in 1997Criminal Code Amendment Act 1997, AustLII following the High Court case Croome v Tasmania.
|
|
Laws also prescribe the minimum age at which a person is permitted to engage in sex, commonly called the age of consent. Social (and legal) attitudes toward the appropriate age of consent have drifted upwards in modern times. For example, while ages from 10 to 13 were typically acceptable in Western countries during the mid-19th century, the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were marked by changing attitudes resulting in raising the ages of consent to ages generally ranging from 16 to 18. Today, the age of consent varies from 12 years (or onset of puberty) to 21, but 16 to 18 is the most common range of ages of consent, but some jurisdictions also have a "close-in-age" exception, allowing two adolescents (as young as 12 years of age) to have sex with each other provided their ages are not more than 2 years apart.
|
|
Access to abortion as set out in the Criminal Code was not available for many women due to variations in distribution of hospitals and doctors, and in whether Therapeutic Abortion Committees were set up and in doctors' interpretations of "health" for women, ages of consent, and parental notification requirements. The report recommended better family planning to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies; but their main conclusion was that abortion services were not being delivered as required.
|
|
The ages of consent for sexual activity vary by jurisdiction across Australia, New Zealand and other parts of Oceania, ranging from age 15 to age 18. The specific activity engaged in or the gender of its participants can also be affected by the law. Below is a discussion of the various laws dealing with this subject. The highlighted age refers to an age at or above which an individual can engage in unfettered sexual relations with another who is also at or above that age.
|
|
Section 135 amended by Act 5 of 2012 with effect from 6 August 2012.Seychelles Penal Code According to the U.S. State Department, the Seychelles age of consent is "traditionally understood" to be 15 but that the country's statutes "fail to clearly define the ages of consent and legal majority"; according to the State Department this causes confusion in regards to the "traditionally understood" age of consent and the age of majority of 18 and therefore complicates enforcement of the law."2013 Trafficking in Persons Report Tier 2 Watch List > Seychelles" (Archive). U.S. State Department.
|
|
It also renamed the Immorality Act to the Sexual Offences Act, 1957. The Interim Constitution, which came into force in 1994, prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, as does the final Constitution which replaced in 1997. As a result, the Constitutional Court struck down the laws prohibiting homosexual sex in the 1998 case of National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality v Minister of Justice. That case did not, however, address the difference between the heterosexual and homosexual ages of consent in section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act.
|
|
In the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, 2007, Parliament reformed and codified the law on sexual offences and made it gender-neutral. The common-law presumption relating to girls under 12 was replaced by a general presumption that children under 12 cannot consent. The act also fixed the age of consent at 16 for all sexual acts. In the 2008 case of Geldenhuys v National Director of Public Prosecutions, the Constitutional Court held that the former difference in the ages of consent had been unconstitutional.
|
|
The marriage codes of some nations use gender- neutral language for the couple getting married, such as "persons" or "tribal members". If a case has not yet come up to establish a precedent, the court clerk will generally say that all one can do is read the code, and that lack of prohibition indicates that same-sex marriage should be legal. However, codes may also refer to tribal customs for marriage, without specifying what that might mean. In a few cases, sex is only specified for differing ages of consent.
|
|
While the legality of adult prostitution varies between different parts of the world, the prostitution of minors is illegal in most countries, and all countries have some form of restrictions against it. There is a dispute surrounding what constitutes a prostituted child. International law defines a child as any individual below the age of 18, but a number of countries legally recognize lower ages of consent and adulthood, usually ranging from 13 to 17 years of age. Thus, law enforcement officers are sometimes hesitant to investigate cases because of the differences in age of consent.
|
|
The homosexual age of consent fixed by the Order (21) was higher than the heterosexual age of consent in the rest of the United Kingdom, which had been set at 17 for decades. The ages of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts in Northern Ireland were eventually equalised at 17 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the passage of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000. To bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom, the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008Statutory Instrument 2008/1769 reduced the age of consent to 16.
|
|
Jailbait: The Politics of Statutory Rape Laws in the United States is a 2004 non-fiction book by Carolyn Cocca, published by the State University of New York Press. It discusses the ages of consent in the United States. Chapter 1 analyzes the general history of statutory rape policies in the U.S., while Chapters 2, 3, and 4 discuss how states revised and adopted the laws in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Each of the three other chapters discusses a particular aspect of the revisions and adoptions: Respectively they are the age revisions, gender-neutral language, and revisions related to 1990s social welfare policies concerning teenage pregnancy, race, and deadbeat fathers.
|
|
The album was produced by Mike Thorne; the recording sessions took place in London and New York City. The first single, "Smalltown Boy", was recorded at The Garden studio (owned by former Ultravox singer John Foxx) and mixed at Maison Rouge studio, both of them based in London. The song "Heatwave" features the tap-dancing rhythms of Caroline O'Connor. The inner sleeve of the album contains the different international ages of consent for males to engage in gay sex, but this was removed from the United States release of the album by MCA Records after sales and radio play were reportedly lower than anticipated because of its inclusion.
|
|
In 1998, Bulatović was charged with rape. The event in question took place on 27 May 1998 in his Belgrade apartment where 27-year-old Bulatović (at the time professional basketball player for FMP Železnik) reportedly raped the underage 15-year-old N.S. (at the time student at one of the Belgrade gymnasiums). At the time she was present at his apartment to complete an earlier commenced interview for a school paper. She was of legal age of consent for sexual activity according to Serbian laws at the timeAges of consent in Europe#Serbia Wikipedia - Ages of consent in Europe The first court process began in December 1998 and ended with Bulatović sentenced to three years in prison.
|
|
The homosexual age of consent fixed by the Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982 was 21 years, higher than the heterosexual age of consent in Northern Ireland of 17. The ages of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts in Northern Ireland were eventually equalised at 17 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the passage of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000, which went into effect in 2001. To bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom, the British Parliament passed the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008,Statutory Instrument 2008/1769 reducing the age of consent to 16, despite the opposition of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
|
|
Small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920. The last 2 states to raise its age of general consent from under 16 to 16 or higher were Georgia, which raised the age of consent from 14 to 16 in 1995, and Hawaii, which changed it from 14 to 16 in 2001. Age-of-consent laws were historically only applied when a female was younger than her male partner. By 2015 ages of consent were made gender-symmetric. Until the late 20th century many states had provisions requiring that the teenage girl must be of previous "chaste character" in order for the sexual conduct to be considered criminal. In 1998 Mississippi became the last state to remove this provision from its code.
|
|
This pattern was reflected in English common law, which was the first in Western Europe to establish statutory rape laws and ages of consent for marriage. In 1275 sexual relations with girls under either 12 or 14 (depending on interpretation of the sources) were criminalized; and second law was made with more severe punishments for under the age of 10 in 1576. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the British colonial administration introduced marriage age restrictions for Hindu and Muslim girls on the Indian subcontinent. A Scottish physician living in 18th century Syria reported that locals tried to contract marriages for their children at a young age, but the marriage was not consummated until the girl "had come of age".
|
|
The Court responded to the statement by the Government that there was a lack of consensus between member states as to the legitimacy of homosexuality, stating there was a long-standing consensus on such matters as legalisation of homosexual activity (Dudgeon v United Kingdom), homosexuals in the military (Smith and Grady v United Kingdom), parental rights, succession to tenancies (Karner v Austria), and equal ages of consent (S. L. v. Austria). While issues such as adoption by same-sex couples and access to same-sex marriage were yet to be brought to consensus, the Court found there was "no ambiguity about the other member States' recognition of the right of individuals to openly identify themselves as gay, lesbian or any other sexual minority, and to promote their rights and freedoms, in particular by exercising their freedom of peaceful assembly." (para.
|
|
This most likely reflects Congressional intent not to unduly interfere with a state's age-of-consent law, which would have been the case if the age was set to 18 under all circumstances. This law is also extraterritorial in nature to U.S. Citizens and Residents who travel outside of the United States. Although legislation tends to reflect general societal attitudes regarding male versus female ages of consent, Richard Posner notes in his Guide to America's Sex Laws: > The U.S. Supreme Court has held that stricter rules for males do not violate > the equal protection clause of the Constitution, on the theory that men lack > the disincentives (associated with pregnancy) that women have, to engage in > sexual activity, and the law may thus provide men with those disincentives > in the form of criminal sanctions. The case cited is Michael M. v. Superior > Court, 450 U.S. 464 (1981).
|
|
"Down with §175" Since 1973 the gay movement had openly been demanding the deletion of Paragraph 175. This 1973 poster uses the new left icon of a raised fist and calls on the reader to fight against discrimination in the family, in the workplace, and in [individuals'] search for housing. In the course of reconciling the legal codes of the two German states after 1990, the Bundestag had to decide whether Paragraph 175 should be abolished entirely (as in the former East Germany) or whether the remaining West German form of the law should be extended to what had now become the eastern portion of the Federal Republic. In 1994, at the end of the period of reconciliation of laws, it was decidedespecially in view of the social changes that had occurred in the meantimeto strike Paragraph 175 entirely from the legal code. According to § 176 StGBSee Ages of consent in Europe#Germany the absolute minimum age of consent is now 14 years for all sexual acts irrespective of the sex of the participants; in special cases, covered in § 182 StGB, an age of 16 years applies.
|
|