Gender, Morality and Legal Divergence

This amounts to an exploration of the complexity of my moral failures.

A 35-year-old woman some miles to the south of here, the wife of a cop and mother herself, got wild and crazy one night, plied several boys with alcohol and had sex with two of them. Not much would have happened if the boys hadn't rolled their vehicle in a drunken stupor later that night.

Now she faces 300 days in jail and is very apologetic after pleading guilty. Her husband divorced her 4 days after her arrest, as well.

But the interesting fact is that some blogger said what most males who ever went through puberty were thinking, somewhere in the back of their minds: "I know when I was 16 I would have done a 35-year-old hot mom." And I would have, too, though I might have freaked out a bit and ran away, too.

But wouldn't we be less sympathetic with a 35-year-old male "molesting" a 15-year-old girl?

In other words, there is a certain asymmetry to sexual desire that emerges at puberty, and that doesn't quite accord with California or US law. Should the fact of the desire and potential lack thereof has an innate asymmetry influence the formulation of law? I don't think so, and do believe that she should be punished for her lousy choices. But did she do less harm to those horny teen boys than we would accord to a female victim in the same sensational position? Or how about a male perpetrator of a male victim?

I would guess so because I would guess that the boys got what they wanted at some level. I would also guess that few would assign the same motivations to a 15 or 16-year-old girl in the mirror version of the same scenario. But is that accurate in terms of formulating a moral position outside of the legal formulation?

As it stands, the law makes distinctions based on what might be termed the "least discriminatory factor." In effect, since the age of each victim is in question as a proxy for their rational decision making, the legal protection should be built on the age factor while avoiding the discriminatory consequences of presuming a difference in outlook for a girl, boy, woman or man, and the relative relationship between each.

It is not ideal, but is simple enough to provide sufficient guidance. Still, I can't escape the general feeling that those boys were harmed more by the consequences of alcohol and driving than her molestation. Is it a flaw of being too familiar with the robustness of my own psyche in my teen years? Maybe, but I doubt I could be convinced I would have been harmed in any particular way by similar circumstances at that tender age, yet would not ascribe the same robustness to girls.