I'm a Brit. We outsourced all our most religious people on a ship heading out of Southampton about 300 years ago and we haven't looked back!
We have a similar knowledge gap here though we do a little better with our sex education I would say. Our teen pregnancy rates have been falling recently but are still higher than the rest of Europe.
Our laws are perhaps a little tighter than yours. Rape is covered under Sexual Offences Act (2003). And is defined as:
(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—(a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,(b) B does not consent to the penetration, and(c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
There's a lot more than that in the act, but a lot of the time, cases fall apart at point (c). The Crown Prosecution Service are unlikely to bring a case where it will fall apart under cross examination. A few high profile and expensive cases in Oxford have fallen apart in the final stages because of how the investigation has been handled Do a search for Oliver Mears and Niall McPaul. And police have been in trouble for not maintaining a neutral stance with victims ahead of investigations - do a search for Operation Yew Tree. It was overcompensation - and the legal system needs to both improve and balance the rights of the accuser and the accused. That's not easy.
Our law is a living and breathing thing and our House of Commons and House of Lords are less partisan when it comes to passing legisltation. Digital crimes are being added - but even then the law causes problems. I heard of a number of cases where children as young as 13 were put on the sex offenders register for viewing pictures of other children shared consensually. Whilst that's not ideal and I wouldn't encourage it, putting a teenager on a register designed to monitor convicted rapists and paedophiles seems heavy handed and counter productive.
Society is moving too fast and those opinion pieces are a real problem on both sides of the debate. The law can be changed, but it will take time. There need to be more people having more productive discussions about how real life is different from both the law and the hyperbolic world of social media.
Good discussion. Much appreicated.
