In my opinion, laws fixing an age of consent are unconstitutional under the 4th, 9th and 14th amendments as interpreted under Lawrence v. Texas. This is because some young people, if not most, are functionally mature enough to consent to sex. Therefore:
1. Young people have a fundamental right to sexual privacy, and that right bars government action against consensual youth sex under the same rationale as the Court's holding in Lawrence.
2. Young people have a fundamental right to sexual self-determination as a matter of international law, arising from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the peremptory norms of international law. All of these rights are protected from infringement by the Federal Government under the 9th Amendment, and from infringement by the states and local governments and their agents and assignees, including parents, under the 9th and 14th Amendments.
3. The application of different standards to youth and adults violates the Equal Protection Clause. Any deviation from equal protection as to age requires at least intermediate scrutiny, which requires that the action be strongly related to an important governmental interest. In my opinion, the present age-of-consent regime does not meet this standard.
In order to test at least the first theory, I have filed a petition for writ of prohibition in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda, requiring California's attorney general to desist from prosecuting consensual sex between young people. I will keep you, as well as the other faction, updated on the progress of that work. Hopefully you will begin to see whose the "stagnation" really is in the coming weeks.