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The United States is a federation of states where the age of consent laws are made at the state, territorial, and federal district levels. There exist several federal statutes related to protecting minors from sexual predators, but none of them imposes an age limit on sexual acts. On 26 June 2003, both heterosexual and homosexual sodomy became legal in all U.S. states, territories, and the federal district under the U.S. Supreme Court decision ''Lawrence v. Texas''〔http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/02-102P.ZO〕 (between non-commercial, consenting adults in a private bedroom). In ''State v. Limon'' (2005), the Kansas Supreme Court used ''Lawrence'' as a precedent to overturn the state's "Romeo and Juliet" law, which proscribed lesser penalties for heterosexuals than homosexuals convicted of similar age of consent related offenses. ==History== While the general age of consent is 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 age of consent was 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Children and Youth in History )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Campaign to Raise the Legal Age of Consent, 1885-1914, Lesson Plan )〕 By 1920 ages of consent generally rose to 16-18 and small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920. As of 2015 the final state to raise its age of general consent was Hawaii, which changed it from 14 to 16 in 2001.〔Volokh, Eugene. "(Statutory rape laws and ages of consent in the U.S. )" ((Archive )). ''Washington Post''. May 1, 2015. Retrieved on September 11, 2015.〕 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 in the late 20th century, many states used to have provisions requiring that the teenage girl must have been 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.〔Urbina, Ian. "(The Challenge of Defining Rape )" ((Archive )). ''The New York Times''. October 12, 2014. Retrieved on September 11, 2015.〕 The laws were designed to prosecute persons far older than the victims rather than teenagers close in age; therefore prosecutors rarely pursued teenagers in relationships with other teenagers even though the wordings of the laws made some close-in-age teenage relationships illegal. After the 1995 Landry and Forrest study concluded that men aged 20 and older produced half of the teenage pregnancies of girls 15-17, states began to more stringently enforce age of consent laws to combat teenage pregnancy in addition to prevent adults from taking advantage of minors.〔Smith and Kercher, p. 7.〕 A backlash among the public occurred when some teenagers engaging in close in age relationships received punishments perceived by the public to be disproportionate,〔Smith and Kercher, p. 8.〕 and so age gap provisions were installed to eliminate penalties if the two parties are close in age, and other measures were introduced that reduced penalties if the two parties were close in age.〔Smith and Kercher, p. 10.〕 Brittany Logino Smith and Glen A. Kercher of the Criminal Justice Center of Sam Houston State University wrote that these laws are often referred to as "Romeo and Juliet laws," though they defined Romeo and Juliet as only referring to an affirmative defense against prosecution.〔Smith and Kercher, p. 11.〕 Previously some of these statutes only applied to heterosexual sex, leaving homosexual sex in the same age range open to prosecution.〔Higdon, Michael J. "(Queer Teens and Legislative Bullies: The Cruel and Invidious Discrimination Behind Heterosexist Statutory Rape Laws )" ((Archive )). ''UC Davis Law Review'', University of California, Davis. Vol. 42, p. 195-253. 2008. Retrieved on September 13, 2015.〕 From 2005 onwards, states have started to enact Jessica's Law statutes, which provide for lengthy penalties (often a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison and lifetime electronic monitoring) for the most aggravated forms of child sexual abuse (usually of a child under age 12). In 2008, in ''Kennedy v. Louisiana'', the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the death penalty for rape of a child was unconstitutional. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ages of consent in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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