My opinion

It seems, imho, to be a protocol of modern western society for there to be ten years or less between the ages of persons in relationships. Now in my seventh decade, I am therefore restricted by societal expectation to not be with someone way younger (say in their twenties, thirties or forties) let alone in my actual actual preferred range! So, what a battle it will surely be to get MAP support from our society if that society already has an even more restrictive set of relationship protocols in place. This seems to have crept up on us over a number of decades. I know of a late 19th century marriage between a man in his fifties and a 16 yo girl - quite acceptable then. This was his second marriage, his first wife having died. Apparently it was quite common back then for this kind of age differential. Even in the first half of the twentieth century, the taking of a child bride was acceptable in the US. The word 'pedophile' is used as a hate word nowadays. We are up against the unwritten laws of society, the accepted social norms of the times. As I read elsewhere recently, it might take a major world event to distract society from it's current focus on this issue and to see a return to the 'good old days'. For now, as with the story of the arrest of the trooper, it all remains good fodder for salacious material to fuel the media.