"The reason for age-of-consent laws — about anything — is that society recognizes there are entire categories of activities to which children and minors are incapable of giving consent. They aren’t mature enough to understand the implications or consequences of a decision, and we have traditionally codified that reality in law. That’s why parents routinely make decisions on their children’s behalf. It’s also one of the reasons children can’t get tattoos or buy alcohol, among many other things. This isn’t hard to understand, and indeed there’s a broad societal consensus around the basic claim that children can’t consent to certain things or make certain decisions on their own behalf."