Advice on hooking up with a much younger guy (legal)

[BannedWord]

7 hours ago, fuckholedc said:

That's because Americans are overwhelmingly Puritanical and want to control others. 

While I'd agree that Americans are far more sexually repressed than say Europeans -- for instance, nudity is shown openly on TV in several countries where that wouldn't be tolerated by our FCC -- I don't buy that we're heading down a Nazi-path of weaponizing sexual behavior that isn't procreative.

Hell, we have school systems that are chomping at the bit to teach Kindergartners about gay sex and others who'd withhold a child's desire to gender transition from his parents at an age as early as 8. Were I a parent -- gay, straight or anywhere in between -- I'd be far more concerned about acting on permanent transition in pre-teen years than a 16-year old experimenting sexually to determine his sexual preferences. But that's a different topic and yet more alarming in many ways. 

@ErosWired makes a compelling point that he'd be concerned about the potential for coercion of his son, not whether that son has a preference for other guys (or in his case, women and men).  But as much as it might be a great fantasy to be a teen's first experience, ask yourself whether you can afford to be outed for statutory rape, endangering a minor, potential charges of sexually exploiting a minor, or anything else a zealous prosecutor would want to throw at you regardless of whether he's of consenting age. He's not an adult. Yet. Even if you can afford a super attorney that can get you acquitted, you'll have suffered repetitional damage. And if you are found guilty and incarcerated, prison justice toward those acts once inmates find out (and they will) is swift and being Big Bubba's bitch is the least you'll have to worry about. There's no clear justice when the lines drawn are so mercurial.

None of us can tell you what to do, but decide if it's worth the retribution you'd face for the 20 minutes you'd likely be fucking this kid. 

[NorfolkUK]

I’d pass. If you only want a “sex buddy” - believe me, a 16 year old isn’t capable of that. And there’s always the possibility he could be lying and he’s actually 15 or 14. At that age, I know I wasn’t mentally capable of processing anything that didn’t have strings attached, not if I remotely liked the guy anyway.

[Guest]

Definitely verify the age of consent in statute.

I believe In some states, the age of consent is 16 if both parties are under 18. If one party is 18 or older, both parties most be 18 or older.

Edited April 21, 2022 by dmvnewbie

[hntnhole]

It doesn't appear that any of the respondents have anything against a meeting taking place, in a public place, perhaps for a meal, for the purpose of evaluating each other, and with the stipulation that no sex will happen unless there is a second meeting - i.e. a "hook-up" at a later date.  

Anyone ????

[BannedWord]

1 hour ago, hntnhole said:

It doesn't appear that any of the respondents have anything against a meeting taking place, in a public place, perhaps for a meal, for the purpose of evaluating each other, and with the stipulation that no sex will happen unless there is a second meeting - i.e. a "hook-up" at a later date.  

On the surface, I'd say 'cool' but I do wonder about how that would look. All of it as stated seems very innocent until you scratch under the surface (so I'll probably express some unpopular opinions, but most people reading me already know that). Kind of gives me a Chris Hansen/To Catch a Predator vibe that it could still get construed as a meeting between an adult and a 'consenting male of minor age' that something sexual might get implied despite all of the written chat evidence (which someone might be inclined to edit).

Also, I wonder about entrapment. How does the OP know that his chat-partner is actually 16 and not someone undercover doing/saying all the right things to entrap him? Don't want to seem alarmist, but just think he may want to advance very cautiously . Like I would make it clear that no sex is happening. Period. Full stop. Anything that alludes to it happening in a written exchange could come back to haunt him. If they want to feel each other out in a face-to-face conversation once they truly 'know' each other and establish rapport, and provided that his local statutes don't constitute an illegality...then the topic may surface. I'd just not surface that immediately in writing.

True story: I once had a chat with someone who was supposedly "18" only to later find out he was "14". Age of consent in our state, @hntnhole is a very firm 18. So as much as he pressed that he wanted to meet, (a) I was much less interested, and (b) I smelled entrapment from miles away. So I shot it down. Good wager? His account disappeared afterward -- either someone else narc'ed on him, or it was a fishing expedition by LE designed to entrap people (don't you hate that?), but in either case, I thought it was the right decision. I'd personally have felt a bit funny about it.

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, hntnhole said:

It doesn't appear that any of the respondents have anything against a meeting taking place, in a public place, perhaps for a meal, for the purpose of evaluating each other, and with the stipulation that no sex will happen unless there is a second meeting - i.e. a "hook-up" at a later date.  

Anyone ????

I can’t advise in favor of it. Let’s say the OP does have this harmless get-to-know-you meeting (in a public place, so there will absolutely be witnesses to him meeting an unaccompanied adolescent), and the meeting results in an arrangement for sex, which then occurs. But then, for any of the various reasons discussed above, the OP suddenly finds that the whole situation has gone horribly pear-shaped and people are using words like “groomed”. And the OP protests that he didn’t attempt to ‘groom’ the boy, but out of the blue up pops an eyewitness who was in the same place where the OP had his “harmless” meeting with the kid alone.

Yeah. A lot of folks would be looking over the tops of their spectacles at that.

In addition, I had overlooked earlier the part where the OP says the kid lives a mile away. Dear God. This has ‘disaster’ written all over it in letters big enough to be seen from space.

[hntnhole]

OK .... I'll accept that.  I have no experience in living where everyone knows everyone else's business, but I did specify "an appreciable distance from either guy's home for that reason.

As always, thanks for your input. 

[bbinbpark]

Did a quick search and I don't think you're on stable ground. A law website I came across in Los Angeles says it is actually 18, and if below 18 there can't be more than 3 years difference. Guy could be legit, or could be a setup, either way doesn't sound like a good idea. This is one of the reason I like guys around my age. No questions on legality

 

[BootmanLA]

17 hours ago, fuckholedc said:

This was well before the surprise US Supreme Court Gay marriage ruling circa 2007 that in effect declared Gay men to be human so age of consent laws might play the role they are supposed to play in your case. 

You're conflating a couple of completely separate, widely spaced in time Supreme Court decisions.

The first was Lawrence v. Texas, from 2003, when the Court ruled that adult, consensual, non-commercial, private (in terms of location) sodomy - which included oral and anal sex - could not be criminalized as they fell within the sphere of privacy rights enjoyed by adults under the Constitution. That ruling was somewhat of a surprise because only seventeen years earlier, the Court had upheld such a law (in a Georgia case titled Bowers v. Hardwick). In the 2003 ruling the Court made it expressly clear it was overturning the Bowers ruling as wrongly decided. It's rare for the Court to expressly overturn a precedent in its entirety, and even rarer after only a short period. More often, the Court nibbles around the edges, carving out exceptions to the original decision until little is left, before disposing of the remains.

 The second case was Obergefell v. Hodges, from 2015 (a dozen years AFTER Lawrence), in which the Court ruled that states could not prohibit same-sex marriage, as marriage was a fundamental liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment; such a restriction would fail under the level of scrutiny it was required to meet to justify a discriminatory law. This one was far less of a surprise because the liberal four (Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan) were a shoe-in, and Kennedy had pretty consistently voted to strike down anti-gay laws for a number of years, even though he was overall a conservative. 

In any event, neither decision addressed age of consent laws at all. In theory, a future case might call into question whether a state's age of consent laws could discriminate on the basis of the activity being same-sex or opposite-sex, but I don't think any states have such differences at this point. If they do, and such were challenged, I don't think even this conservative court would rule that such a distinction was permissible - I'm pretty sure Gorsuch and Roberts would side with the liberals on that one. 

[BootmanLA]

1 hour ago, bbinbpark said:

Did a quick search and I don't think you're on stable ground. A law website I came across in Los Angeles says it is actually 18, and if below 18 there can't be more than 3 years difference. Guy could be legit, or could be a setup, either way doesn't sound like a good idea. This is one of the reason I like guys around my age. No questions on legality

In the United States, age of consent laws vary considerably from state to state. It's simply not possible to state what "the age of consent" is without knowing the state in question. Period. Any statement that "X is the age" is at best a guess. The "X years difference" rules are the law in some states, not in others, and the X number varies among the states that do have such a law. In some it's a flat cutoff that anyone over a certain age can consent with anyone else who can consent, regardless of what the difference in age may be.

The one thing that CAN be said, nationwide, is that if both parties are over 18, there is no "age of consent" situation to worry about. If either is under that age, the situation changes from state to state.

[ejaculaTe]

9 hours ago, NorfolkUK said:

And there’s always the possibility he could be lying and he’s actually 15 or 14.

Grindr, I assume, requires one to state one's age, and I'd hazard a guess that the minimum age to get on the app/site is 18. The Kid is 16 going on 17 as he told the OP. The Kid has thus already told one lie, and for all anyone knows, let alone the OP, The Kid could actually be 15. "But he said he was almost 17 -- I asked. Don't tell me he lied to me" won't be much help. In most states, mistake of fact as to someone's age is not a defense to a charge of statutory rape, sexual assault, or similar offenses.

[fuckholedc]

2 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

You're conflating a couple of completely separate, widely spaced in time Supreme Court decisions.

The first was Lawrence v. Texas, from 2003, when the Court ruled that adult, consensual, non-commercial, private (in terms of location) sodomy - which included oral and anal sex - could not be criminalized as they fell within the sphere of privacy rights enjoyed by adults under the Constitution. ...

 The second case was Obergefell v. Hodges, from 2015 (a dozen years AFTER Lawrence), in which the Court ruled that states could not prohibit same-sex marriage, as marriage was a fundamental liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment; such a restriction would fail under the level of scrutiny it was required to meet to justify a discriminatory law. ...

In any event, neither decision addressed age of consent laws at all.

No neither addressed age of consent laws.

But they marked the dates that Gay men were essentially declared to be human and the USA became less fascist (it's still primarily a financial scheme to impoverish people in order to enrich a small number of financial Oligarchs).  So Gay men were essentially declared human in the US in 2003 with the overturning of Bowers v. Hardwick, as you explicitly mention.

[fuckholedc]

13 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

While I'd agree that Americans are far more sexually repressed than say Europeans -- for instance, nudity is shown openly on TV in several countries where that wouldn't be tolerated by our FCC -- I don't buy that we're heading down a Nazi-path of weaponizing sexual behavior that isn't procreative.

The US was explicitly a fascist nation by any reasonable measure until 2003 with the overturning of Bowers v. Hardwick.  You have only been moving *FROM* a fascist path for 19 years but there are numerous signs that the heterosexual fascists (mostly encamped in the R party) want to take the country back (the obsessive "grooming" issue is only one such sign - in fact American heterosexuals tried to groom every Gay man who has lived within it's borders during their lifetime by aggressively projecting their heterosexual ideal as the only valid sexual option).

[fuckholedc]

25 minutes ago, fuckholedc said:

The US was explicitly a fascist nation by any reasonable measure until 2003 with the overturning of Bowers v. Hardwick.  You have only been moving *FROM* a fascist path for 19 years but there are numerous signs that the heterosexual fascists (mostly encamped in the R party) want to take the country back (the obsessive "grooming" issue is only one such sign - in fact American heterosexuals tried to groom every Gay man who has lived within it's borders during their lifetime by aggressively projecting their heterosexual ideal as the only valid sexual option).

So a more palatable word for most people born and raised in the USA would be "authoritarian" rather than "fascist" and the justification that the USA was an explicitly authoritarian country is it's history + Wilhelm Reich and "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" wherein Reich details the essential role that sexual repression plays in the rise of authoritarianism as a political force.  This is reinforced by more recent analyses of the psychology of authoritarianism.  

[ErosWired]

3 hours ago, ejaculaTe said:

In most states, mistake of fact as to someone's age is not a defense to a charge of statutory rape, sexual assault, or similar offenses.

Put another way, you’re not getting off the hook with “Oops”.