Both the female and the male teenager needed consent of their parents to marry because they were under 20 years old, the age of majority.
[6][7][8] In 2009, a note was added that exempted from criminal punishment a person who committed sexual intercourse with a 14- or 15-year-old for the first time if he married the victim.
[9] In 1275, the English government set the age of consent at 12 years old for females as part of a rape law and a 1576 law was created with more severe punishments for which the age of consent was set at 10 years old for females.
In 1929, age of consent for marriage (sexual intercourse) was raised to 16 years old for both, females and males.
[18] In 1978, the petition was discussed in a broadcast by radio France Culture in the program "Dialogues", with the transcript later published under the title Sexual Morality and the Law in a book by Michel Foucault, later published again under the title The Danger of Child Sexuality.
The participants, including Foucault, play-writer/actor Jean Danet, novelist/gay activist Guy Hocquenghem and feminist Simone de Beauvoir had all signed the petition.
[20] In 1979, the Dutch Pacifist Socialist Party supported an unsuccessful petition to lower the age of consent to 12.
English common law existed in the British colonies of America and was adopted by Delaware and other states in 1776.
[32] In 2012, Alabama State Representative Mac McCutcheon sponsored a bill to raise the age of consent from 16 to 18.
[35] In June 2005, a bill was proposed before the General Assembly of Georgia (USA) to raise the age of consent from 16 to 18.
[39] In 2006, following the case of Genarlow Wilson (Wilson v. State), aggravated child molestation was reduced to a misdemeanor with a maximum of one year in prison if the offender was under 19, the victim was either 14 or 15 years old, and the offender is no more than 48 months older than the victim.
Under Kentucky law, a person who is sixteen years of age or older may consent to a sexual act with a person not more than ten years older than the minor, but otherwise below the age of eighteen is presumed to be incapable of consent to a sexual act.
In 1983, the age of consent in Wisconsin was raised from 16 to 18; under the new law, sex with a minor 16 or older carried the lesser penalty of a Class A misdemeanor.
[48] However, after strong public opposition, the law was raised back to 18 on June 27, 2007, by a vote of 74 to zero (22 abstentions).
[50] In January 2004, a Division bench of the Kerala's High Court in Southern India suggested that the age of consent should be raised from 16 to 18 in that state.
[56] These tensions and antagonisms continued among activist circles until the 1980s; however, since the 1970s, gay liberationist groups promoting frontline advocacy against the age of consent were falling into decline.
[59] In Indiana, a change in the law decriminalizes consensual sex between adolescents if they are found by a court to be in a "dating relationship" with an age difference of four years or less[59] and other states have adopted similar reforms.
In Texas, Governor Rick Perry vetoed Romeo and Juliet laws that had been passed by the legislature in 2009,[62] but signed one in 2011 to go into effect in September of that year.
[64] In the State v. Limon case, Kansas's Romeo and Juliet law was found to be unconstitutional because it excluded same-sex sexual conduct.
[65][66] Some pedophiles[67] and their sympathizers have called to abolish the age of consent to allow children and adults to have sexual relationships.
[68][69] Past groups advocating for this include NAMBLA in the United States and Vereniging Martijn in the Netherlands.