this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
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Even porn sites know that “barely legal” means 18+.
Well, the US has a federal limit of 18+ for porn, so 18 is barely legal for porn. For alcohol, 18 is illegal and 21 is barely legal. For work, it's generally 14 and gradually dropping as more ghouls pass awful laws in an attempt to bring us back to the Gilded Age.
For sex (that isn't filmed), laws vary between the federal minimum of 16 and as high as 18. Google's LLM thinks that Iowa has an age of consent of 14, but I don't see any evidence that that's correct
Interestingly (and despicably), Mississippi took until 1998 to remove its provision that a statutory rape victim must be "of chaste character" for it to be a crime, so technically Trump could have legally abused certain girls there as late as the late '90s.
Iowa may be one of the states that has the romeo and juliet clauses, where sex with someone 'technically' underage is okay, if you're within a 'normal' range. I think it's 2-3 years for most places.
All states have Romeo and Juliet laws, though the parameters in which a R&J defense can apply (against statutory sexual abuse claims) vary from state to state, sometimes from county to county.
Most typically, the younger participant has to be at least 15 years old, and the age difference has to be no more than five years. A fifteen year-old girl and her twenty-year-old boyfriend are probably safe from CSA charges. Probably.
Married couples are a common exception to this rule and are a common way religious groups side-step ages of consent. Some states regulate the ages one can wed, while others don't or have exceptions.
Curiously, for most states, same-sex encounters are not protected by R&J laws, so two fifteen year old besties who get caught fooling around experimentally can both be charged if a DA is determined. Sometimes a DA is that determined to make an example of a teenage couple.
Sexual experimentation between a kid and their peers is developmentally normal, even if it's illegal.
illegal . <> . legal
. . . . . . . . . ^ barely legal (18,01)
. . . . . ^ almost legal (17,99)
15 is not on this scale, you do not have to be a porn site to understand that barely something is not the same as almost something, and that almost something is not the same as definitely not something.