I have mixed feelings on this. I just looked it up, age of majority is 18, while age of consent is 16. So, the 16/17 year olds you mention are still minors, and that's a group where I don't mind additional (reasonable) restrictions being placed upon. So in theory this is fine. In practice...perhaps also fine, but slippery slope is a concern, as are some other things I'll mention later.
I'm coming at it mostly from a US perspective, though, and we still technically have some rights, so the situation is a little different. But my main slippery slope concern is that age of consent and majority are linked in a lot of people's minds, so this could, down the road, be used to take legal adults' rights.
But the real issue, as others have mentioned, is that this will generally not be enforced equally, and I'm against all laws that have that issue. People lie, and a 21 year old could accidentally sleep with a 17 year old. Interestingly, that's the same age gap as a 20 year old sleeping with a 16 year old, which would be legal. Odd. Anyway, if the 21 year old is a man, he's fucked (pardon the pun.) If the sexes were reversed, generally I'd imagine it wouldn't be enforced.
Laws like this might seem good on paper (in fact I'm inclined to agree it looks good on paper), but are often used to further destroy relationships and erode trust. This is another "men should be scared of women" law in practice, once again wrapped up in the 'think of the children' guise.
I have mixed feelings on this. I just looked it up, age of majority is 18, while age of consent is 16. So, the 16/17 year olds you mention are still minors, and that's a group where I don't mind additional (reasonable) restrictions being placed upon. So in theory this is fine. In practice...perhaps also fine, but slippery slope is a concern, as are some other things I'll mention later.
I'm coming at it mostly from a US perspective, though, and we still technically have some rights, so the situation is a little different. But my main slippery slope concern is that age of consent and majority are linked in a lot of people's minds, so this could, down the road, be used to take legal adults' rights.
But the real issue, as others have mentioned, is that this will generally not be enforced equally, and I'm against all laws that have that issue. People lie, and a 21 year old could accidentally sleep with a 17 year old. Interestingly, that's the same age gap as a 20 year old sleeping with a 16 year old, which would be legal. Odd. Anyway, if the 21 year old is a man, he's fucked (pardon the pun.) If the sexes were reversed, generally I'd imagine it wouldn't be enforced.
Laws like this might seem good on paper (in fact I'm inclined to agree it looks good on paper), but are often used to further destroy relationships and erode trust. This is another "men should be scared of women" law in practice, once again wrapped up in the 'think of the children' guise.