And yet, instead of trumpeting my loyalty to this most reasonable cause, Brightbill drags me into the fray, pretending that I think that a parent-approved courtship in a situation like the one in the case she mentions mitigates anything. It mitigates nothing. ‘Mitigates’ would mean that Crime X becomes, as a result of this mitigation, crime x. Rather, my hostility to this kind of thinking meant that I thought that Crime X was actually Crime Y. It means ‘statutory rape’ instead of ‘lewd and lascivious.’
Douglas Wilson