You know what, go ahead and just believe you can simply assume that a female drinking an alcoholic beverage in a public establishment is more than enough for you to know she is 21. Try that with the judge too when it turns out she was 17. Report back with your results.
Come on man, you know what he is saying and why he’s saying it. There has to be some responsibility on the part of the minor at this point. A person can’t read someone’s mind and know their age. He’s not saying it’s right, he’s not saying anything about Gaetz one way or the other, he’s making a point that there should be some responsibility if a person has done all of their due diligence.
There really isn’t. Have sex with someone who is a minor, get charged, go to jail. All of the burden is on the adult. Hazards of chasing after people on the cusp of adulthood.
Some states have distinctions based on how much older someone is. So if you are less than 5 years older for instance it is a lower offense than if you are Matt Gaetz’s age. Of course the vast majority of cases are never prosecuted because the underage person actually wanted it to happen and no one knows or doesn’t care. It is when you piss off the parents, or in this case the FBI when they are investigating one of your close allies, that you get sent to the pokey.
I guess it just screws with my sense of justice. You want to go after people who are knowingly doing something wrong or else you’re really not protecting society. Going after someone who is duped into a crime they had no idea they were committing makes zero sense to me.
Do you know if your BAC is .07 or .08? Sometimes it is on you to know even if knowing isn’t very easy.
I get where you are coming from, but the whole goal of the law is to protect young people, even if it is against themselves, and the responsibility lies on the adult, even if they are as dumb as Matt Gaetz.
Oh, and statutory rape laws are different from the federal sex trafficking law we are talking about. A majority of states have an age of consent for sex under 18. I think the sex trafficking law is about transporting people under 18 for the purposes of having sex with them, which is what the ally of Gaetz, Joel Greenburg, was being investigated for.
Summary of statutory rape laws - https://www.cga.ct.gov/.../rpt/2003-r-0376.htm
Just to be clear, nothing I’ve said refers to Gaetz. I’m not defending that guy, or actually anyone 
I guess I just don’t see how you’re protecting young people by prosecuting someone who wasn’t interested in having sex with a minor and was in essence tricked into doing so? I would assume the normal route for the guy going after minors isn’t to hook up with them in bars.
