Very good points, madscience. The thing to understand here is that our society has a powerful fear of, and love/hate relationship with, sexuality. Everyone knows it's pleasurable, but at the same time, deep down, the entrenched remnants of Victorian morality make the bulk of us feel guilty and "tainted" for enjoying something that is "dirty."

This is why some people can actually discuss things like the drinking age for youths in a largely rational manner, but far fewer today can do the same with the subject of youth sexuality. Alcohol and other topics just do not elicit the same degree of emotion that the topic of sex does. Deep down, it's not about concern for girls being taken advantage of or emotionally harmed by "creepers" (a popular word for this type of person among younger people right now, btw), but simply about our culture not wanting girls to have sex, period.

It's about the idea of something sacred to our cultural mindset being violated or "tainted" by something as "dirty" and "problematic" as sex. We grudgingly accept having to tolerate it being a choice for those with their full civil rights, but the idea that we can at least protect those who are "too young" (read: do not have their freedom of choice recognized due to their age) from experiencing the joys -er, dirty act- of sexual activity makes our culture feel better about all of us filthy adults shamelessly enjoying it as we choose, married or otherwise. Standing up against that makes people feel noble and heroic, or displaying a sense of chivalry, when in actuality they are expressing a form of ageism, and a major form of sexism towards girls that is disguised as "protection." It's not about protecting them per se, it's about protecting their perceived chastity. It's not morality, but moralism. It's not consideration, it's overcompensation. It's not freedom from harm, it's freedom from experiencing a forbidden pleasure, i.e., a legal prohibition against younger people eating fruit from that one specific tree that God forbid them to touch, metaphorically speaking.

This is one of the reasons why AoC laws and the attitudes and concerns emerging from them are so often applied far less to boys than to girls. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that AoC laws are, at their core, sexist to both males and females, albeit in different ways; they carry a heavy dose of misandrist attitudes towards male sexuality and paternalistic and moralizing attitudes towards female sexuality.

Attempting to speak rationally about this particular subject undermines the sacrosanct loyalty to the concepts our culture puts on the metaphorical pedestal, which is why the reasoning faculties of the mind close down in a knee-jerk fashion and the emotions take over when this subject is broached. That guy you mentioned may have thought less of you because he was irritated that you tried to make him think outside the societally imposed "box." By trying to make him think rationally about this subject, you violated his beliefs. So he had to get up and walk away so you wouldn't run the risk of making him think any further.

And why do people so suddenly adopt this attitude without question once they reach the vaunted Magic Age and gain most of their civil rights, including control over their sexual choices? Is it because they have now suddenly "seen the light" and been imbued with heaps of wisdom and understanding that they didn't possess while on the other side of that arbitrary line? No, it's because on the eve of their 18th birthday, they were suddenly and artificially imbued with power and a form of inherent authority by the state. It was now longer an advantage to them, socially & culturally speaking, to identify with the plight of those who still lack those civil rights. They are now the equivalent of a beleaguered lower tier peon who suddenly got an important promotion and has now become a "company man." His loyalties and mindset have now changed because forgetting where he came from is now advantageous to him. Identifying with those whom he left behind undermines his newly bestowed power and authority.

Power is known to be a common corrupting influence, but he rationalizes it in his own mind as being a surge of enlightenment rather than an influx of corruption. Doing the expedient thing, alas, most often supersedes doing the right thing in the eyes of many people.

The pro-choice majority of MAPs are often considered maliciously selfish for thinking otherwise, but we are obviously in no position, socially speaking, to be as close-minded about this subject en masse as the average teleiophile can, just as the majority of homosexuals were in no position to think exactly the same way about homosexual suppression as straight people could afford to think during the 1950s. That is why homosexuals of note during that era like Liberace often said one thing in public, but was quick to do another thing behind the scenes. Sometimes your position in society forces you to think outside the proverbial box about certain subjects of extreme personal relevance, and that is perfectly normal - not selfish, unusual, expedient, or abhorrent.