I am a slave to morality. All of my friends regard me as the most morally aligned person they know. But there are times where it seems I am too moral. Times where being moral actually results in me not having a better time. These times are when I am dealing with women. This sounds weird, but let me explain. In fact, I have a perfect example from a few years ago.
I was nineteen, and I went to Las Vegas with a buddy to visit some of his friends out there. By chance one of those friends turned out to be a drop dead gorgeous 16 year old girl. As luck would have it (and to make a long story short) this girl wanted to have sex with me. Being Mr. Morality, I quickly deterred her advances as I thought it was illegal. But then my friend’s buddies threw me a curveball. In Las Vegas Nevada, the consenting age for sex is 16. It was legal. I was now free to legally have sex with this bombshell of a girl. But I still felt it was wrong. In fact my argument for not having sex with her was “I’m not going to allow the state of Nevada to decide what is morally acceptable to me”. Basically this girl did not come from a healthy family. She was in foster care and had a generally troubled childhood. I felt that if I had sex with her, I would be taking advantage of her because she did not yet have the foresight to realize that what she wanted was not in her best interest.
My friends argued “who am I to decide what is in her best interest?” And I think that is my question to all of you. Should I have given the girl more credit that she was able to make a mature decision? Or a better question: should I have even cared?