My point is that you stated as fact to the poster steambadger something that is not fact. Rape can happen to either sex by virtue of his/her partner not consenting to intercourse. As I pointed out, in the Mary Kay Letourneau case and many others like it, she was not indicted, tried and convicted of penetrating his body in any way. As far as I know there was no evidence that she did. She was convicted of not obtaining consent. She did not obtain consent because the law deemed him incapable of giving it due to his minority status. In future, please distinguish between fact and advocacy, between what is true and what you wish were true.

As to consent generally, I think juries should decide the issue based on all the facts. Every case is different and the more we fashion laws to be one-size-fits-all the more we set ourselves up for error. In the case of statutory rape, some boys and girls are more advanced emotionally and psychologically than others and therefore may well be able to give informed consent to sex at the age of 17 or 16. Others may not be so advanced. So, to my way of thinking, juries which hear the evidence specific to each case should make the decision, not state legislatures trying to fashion a law for everyone. Juries are not the gullible children they are so often made out to be. My experience with them is that they are hardheaded, skeptical adults who try their best. They're at least as qualified as the politicians I'm familiar with.

The same should be true if the person claiming to have been raped had previously drunk alcohol. Its effect at the time of sex is what should determine whether he/she was too drunk to consent. Blood-alcohol levels are one way to judge that, but are hardly the only one and not always the best. I mean honestly, if the person is passing-out drunk, what are the chances he/she is going to go find a cop and get a breath test? If he/she waits til morning, that seriously alters the test results. And when you take a drink of beer, wine, whiskey, whatever, it doesn't immediately register on a breathalyzer as your having drunk that amount. It takes awhile, so the timing of the testing is all important.

That's why, IMO, there should be no tests in the law which automatically result in a finding of lack of consent. Juries are a good and capable institution. Although certainly not infallible, I'm far more comfortable with them making individual determinations based on the facts of each case than with politicians casting their wide nets.

I think you misread what I wrote. You seem to think I said something about injuries. I didn't, but I did say something about juries.

You say we have to set an age limit. My point is that we do not have to do any such thing. The only thing setting an age limit does is that, below that age, whatever it is, consent ceases to be an issue a jury is permitted to decide. It cannot be a defense to the charge of rape because the underage person is conclusively deemed incapable of giving consent. That sweeps those who can give consent and those who can't all up into the same pile. I'm saying that juries are fully capable of looking at all the facts and making the determination of consent for themselves the same as they do now in every case where rape of an of-age person is charged.

The various tests you mention for determining a person's level of intoxication are of course admissible for purposes of deciding whether he/she was capable of giving consent. My point is that an arbitrary figure of .2 or whatever should not automatically result in a finding of lack of consent. The jury should hear the evidence, but shouldn't be bound by a single magic number.

Admittedly I wrote poorly in trying to be brief. It is certainly true that Emerson and the transcendentalists have had an impact on American thought. Unfortunately the American thought they influenced has been confined to a tiny minority of people. What I meant is that they had a tiny effect on Americanism. What most affected American character and personality was our frontier experience that made us the pragmatic, materialistic, individualistic folks we are known around the world to be. Emerson and the transcendentalists had nothing to do with that and I could argue would have actively opposed it.