Court Opinion

ID: 9625592
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:45:21.014744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:11.478709
License: Public Domain

SCHWAB, C. J.,
concurring.
As the law governing the permissible limits of legal distinctions between men and women evolves, there is a danger that anything we say today will be found amusing by future generations because of a changed social and legal climate. The twenty-year-old language in State v. Hunter, 208 Or 282, 286-88, 300 P2d 455 (1956), is already sadly dated. The same could be said about the six-year-old language in State v. Bearcub, 1 Or App 579, 581-82, 465 P2d 252 (1970), repeated again today.
The statutory scheme here attacked is, frankly, a hangover from an earlier era when double standards applying to men and women were more widely accepted. Nevertheless, I think it reasonable to conclude that this statutory scheme currently survives constitutional scrutiny based on the following reasoning: (1) it is not unconstitutional for the legislature to make the judgment that there is an age below which a person, male or female, is incapable of making genuine consent to participation in sexual acts — this is the basis for making sexual relations with young persons, male and female, criminal; and (2) when the young person involved is a female, the possibility of her becoming pregnant without legally effective consent is a rational basis for making the crime more serious than when the young person involved is a male.