Another Twist in the Issue of Sexual Predators

[Thomas Kirby]

Oh I see' date=' so if we just learned how to love sexual predators and not hate them, they would stop what they're doing and the children would be saved. I mean it has certainly worked for the British. They tolerated and harbored extremists, and nothing bad's come of that, right?

 

Do you think Jessica Lunsford harbored a secret hatred for sexual predators, Thomas? I wonder if that's what was on her mind when John Couey offered her a piece of candy. No? Well, perhaps it crossed her mind later as he was brutally raping her over and over again. No? Well perhaps it crossed her mind later, as the dirt was filling in over her face, in between gasps for air.

 

You think?

 

 

You know, I wouldn't say that I hate anything, but there are a few things in this world that I strongly wish I saw a lot less of. And no, it's actually not "sexual predators" that I happen to be thinking of at this moment.[/quote']

 

Sir, I respectfully submit to you the idea that people who get into the habit of hate are much more dangerous to the life and well-being of other humans than very nearly every sexual predator in existence.

[Pangloss]

Oh I see. Now not only do we all (those of us who think this is a reasonable compromise) hate sex offenders (which I doubt is the case), but now you're accusing us of being a greater danger to society than sex offenders.

 

Gee. Thanks.

 

 

That aside, why can't we deal with both "people who hate" and the potential danger of sex offenders who continue to threaten children after serving their time, so long as both are handled in reasonable and fair ways, such as that outlined above?

[Thomas Kirby]

Why did you take the comment personally?

[Pangloss]

Whether I took it personally or not, that's what you said.

 

Are you going to answer the question?

[Thomas Kirby]

Pangloss:

 

I didn't say that all of us hate sex offenders. Those of us who do are a danger to society. Anyone who could turn a person out in a raging storm to die because he bears the label "sex offender" is himself or herself a much greater danger to society than the sex offender is.

 

Hatred is like cancer. It is no more controllable than an aggressive cancer was a century ago. It takes things and territory that do not belong to it. If you think I am saying that hating sex offenders causes people to hate a lot of people who are not sex offenders, you are absolutely right. The key to that is in the word "potential" in the context that you just used it in. It is one of the buzzwords most often used in the early 21st century to deliberately mislead people, the way it was used to mislead people into the war against Iraq. When someone starts babbling about the "potential harm" that might be caused by sexual predators, Saddam Hussein, pitbull dogs, pet snakes, any of those things, society would be better off if that person had their larynx removed and were banned from access to all keyboards. I may well get killed for saying it, but these people are causing us massive damage. I don't even care who sees it anymore. It's futile to even talk about it. Bandwagons, jingoism, blind patriotism, obedience to authority and complete trust in liars are the morality of this day.

[Pangloss]

But again, nobody's being turned out into a storm. They are simply being directed to another facility. In many cases that facility may even be closer than the one they currently would go to.

 

I realize you all are a bit at my mercy when it comes to information on this issue, but I can see how you might be under the impression that these shelters are on every streetcorner. They're actually pretty few. Normally they only open three or four shelters for the entire region (3-4 million people). They're just not very popular. The last time they opened shelters the nearest one to me was over 15 miles from my house. But there's a state-run women's correctional facility less than a mile away. And this is a suburban commuter area, so there are sex offenders all over this area (as I discovered and reported here a few months ago).

 

Where is the hatred, please?

[Thomas Kirby]

The hatred is everywhere.

[Phi for All]

The hatred is everywhere.

There are none so blind as those who will not see, except those who see only hatred everywhere.

[Mokele]

Another thing: Nobody is exactly caught by surprise by a hurricane. They're *huge*, rather slow, bloody obvious, and the news media in an area goes to 100% hurricane stuff as soon as it even looks half-likely to affect an area. Any sex offender, knowing this law, has 3 options: get out of the state ahead of the storm, stay home and hunker down (if it's a strong, inland home), or go to the prison-shelter. Nobody is being 'turned out into the storm'. If anyone is so collosally stupid as to not be able to effectively plan an escape or shelter with *all* of those options and such advanced warning, they *deserve* to die; natural selection.

 

Pets are often not allowed in shelters either, but I don't hear anyone yelling that pet-owners are being discriminated against.

 

Mokele

[Thomas Kirby]

The whole idea of defining someone as a "sex offender" is vicious, mean-spirited, hateful, and promoted by dangerously insane people who are at heart homicidal. It is just one more way to make the human race its own worst enemy.

[Pangloss]

So let me get this straight:

 

1) You believe that there are vicious, mean-spirited, hateful, dangerously insane people in the world.

 

2) People who sexually molest children are not included in their number.

 

Do I have that right? I just want to be clear, you understand.

[Thomas Kirby]

I'm not going to answer that question.

[Bettina]

I'm not going to answer that question.

 

I'm just curious and not trying to start trouble, but, are you a sex offender?

 

Bettina

[Dak]

The whole idea of defining someone as a "sex offender" is vicious, mean-spirited, hateful, and promoted by dangerously insane people who are at heart homicidal. It is just one more way to make the human race its own worst enemy.

 

did you mean "The whole idea of defining someone who hasnt commited a sexual crime as a "sex offender" is vicious, mean-spirited, hateful, and promoted by dangerously insane people who are at heart homicidal. It is just one more way to make the human race its own worst enemy", or just that its cruel to define anyone, reguardless of their actions, as a sex offender?

[Thomas Kirby]

The whole idea of defining someone as a "sex offender" is vicious, mean-spirited, hateful, and promoted by dangerously insane people who are at heart homicidal. It is just one more way to make the human race its own worst enemy.

 

I do mean that the idea of defining someone as a "sex offender" is all of the above, and is promoted by the above. Some of those who promote the idea are sex offenders, if they were only caught. Am I a sex offender? I've urinated on trees in public. I've held hands with a 14 year old. I was 13 at the time, but these days that doesn't seem to be a defense.

 

Some of the promoters are honestly concerned about children, but I don't think they are the main force behind the movement to classify so much of human sexuality as dangerous. I think that the main force includes the usual suspects, including people who do things to small boys that customs men would back away from doing. When I read about who has levelled accusations against people, how they have been convicted of sexual offenses, how the trials went, "farcical" doesn't quite cover it. The real thrust of the movement to "protect" children against sexuality comes from the same current of vicious sadism against all humans, the current of hatred of life, the thing that makes people hate you for even having consensual sex with another adult. I think it needs to be said. I don't think we are being "inconvenienced" by people who run a genuine program to protect children. I think we are being torn into by a group of wingnuts who think that all sex anywhere is rape.

 

In too many cases it has been just plain nuts, irresponsible, and stupid to call a person a sex offender. I don't think it's by accident, I think it's on purpose. I think it is actually the program to use "sex offender", "sex offense" and "we must protect the children" as passwords for root access to bypass Constitutional rights, frighten people, practice a vicious kind of social control, and generate a lot of profit. The people who do this would make Genghis Khan look like a bleeding heart liberal.

 

You just don't know what you are facing.

[Pangloss]

Okay, once again, let's see if we have your opinion straight. What you're saying is that you feel that we should abandon any and all attempts to deal with sex offenders because:

 

1) Sometimes people are mislabelled as sex offenders (a problem which can surely be dealt with through proper legislation and awareness)

 

2) There is a "main force behind the movement to classify so much of human sexuality as dangerous" (sounds like two wrongs making a right to me)

 

3) All sex offender trials are "farcical" (an obvious straw man)

 

 

You just don't know what you are facing.

 

You're wrong. I know exactly what I am facing.

[Thomas Kirby]

I'm going to go ahead and post twice in a row, and apologies to anyone this offends, but there is something else to say.

 

I am not a sex offender. I am not even homosexual. However, I am a "faggot." You go to the school I attended, mention my name, and receive the automatic reply "you mean that faggot"? WTH is a faggot? I still don't know. It's what they used to call some kind of piece of wood cut up the right size for burning. When you have the label on you, people you don't know pop out of nowhere and punch you in the gut for just existing. It's all because another 7 year old told him that "that Thomas Kirby is a faggot." It's like a not very secret signal used by an age-old conspiracy to destroy certain people. I don't even think there is a reason except that they get off on it.

 

A "faggot", in the "minds" of people who use the term that way, already is a sex offender even if he is too young to have ever had sex. He "just has that look" about him. You just know that he, well you just know. You don't have to ask anyone, you don't have to do any research or watch what he does, you just know.

 

What I think, just from my life experience and from reading about these things, is that it's not so much that a faggot is a sex offender. A sex offender is another kind of faggot, another target of cruelty and sadism. One of the symptoms of this phenomenon is the dissociation from the deeds against them that I can see even here. Hell, a lot of people still don't even feel safe with gay men around their children.

 

One of the big reasons I don't believe the "sex is dangerous for whoever" crowd is because of this sadism against "faggots." They make up these stories so they can hurt people and murder them, and I've come to believe that even more firmly after arguing with some of these people. Their personalities are sadistic and homicidal. They like cruelty and killing, and they like having non-humans to do it to. They are a lot more fun to these people when the victims can cry out and curse against them, too. Now you may have an idea, too, why I tell you that these practices are used to make humanity its own worst enemy.

[Pangloss]

I think it's a fatal mistake to spin the debate over dealing with people who rape and murder children into some kind of attack on the freedom of sexual preference and practice.

 

Why can't we deal with both as separate issues? Why would the protection of children against violent rapists and murderers have to be sacrificed because there are idiots out there who can't stand to see Janet's nipples pop out during the SuperBowl? That simply makes no sense at all.

 

Just because you are incapable of separating issues along non-partisan, real-world lines does not mean that everyone else is incapable of doing so.

[Thomas Kirby]

Why do we have to lump so many people in with people who actually have raped and murdered pre-pubescent children? Why do we have to do this to the extent that we completely fail to respond to most other kinds of abuse? Why does abuse have to be politically popular to be responded to?

 

I am quite able to separate a lot of issues. What I see is the intentional use of the term "sex offender" as a dumping ground for anything that someone simply doesn't like, harmful or harmless, and the deliberate use of "it's like pedophilia" to spread propaganda against just about anything.

[Pangloss]

In many cases, cited here (which apparently you've just neglected to read), we don't.

 

Jessica's law, for example, which sentences adults to 25 years to life on the first offense, only applies to violent acts against children ages 12 or less. It doesn't affect minors, and it doesn't affect the kind of "hey she looked 18 to me" events we've talked about here.

 

This thread is another example -- the restriction on hurricane shelters only applies to those who have been specifically prohibited from contact with minors, which is not the case in those "hey she looked 18 to me" cases.

 

And yet you steadfastly refuse to agree upon the value of even these laws, erroneously clinging to your argument that we shouldn't enact these laws because they are of the "hey she looked 18 to me" variety, in spite of the fact that it's been explained to you, with supporting links, from the very first post in this thread, that that is not the case.

 

Well?

[Dak]

I think it needs to be said. I don't think we are being "inconvenienced" by people who run a genuine program to protect children. I think we are being torn into by a group of wingnuts who think that all sex anywhere is rape.

 

I agree that there are a few people who subscribe to the oppinion that you outlined above; however, the vast majority of people can differentiate between harmless sexual dievience (such as homosexuality, SubDom etc) and potentially damaging sexual dievience like paedophillia and rape.

 

People who harm people are offenders. people who harm people in a sexual way are sex offenders. Thusly are padophiles and rapists persecuted and labeled, to protect the rest of us.

 

Yes, there are some who would see homophobes, 'sluts', people who have sex outside of marrage etc lumped in with the above, but that doesnt detract from the nessesity be cautiouse of rapists and paedophiles.

 

I agree that, in some cases, the labelling of someone as a sex offender seems a bit uncalled for, and i agree that we shouldnt automatically assume that its ok to suspend someones human rights if theyve been labeled a sex offender (as do most people, afaict), but that doesnt make the whole labelling people as sex offenders thing wrong.

 

WTH is a faggot? I still don't know. It's what they used to call some kind of piece of wood cut up the right size for burning.

 

briefly: a faggot was originally sticks and other thin slivers of wood tied into a bundle, so that they would burn slower and for longer, kind of like a log. It was burnt by poor people, who would sell the decent fire wood to rich people and themselves make do with a crappy substitute.

 

Thus, 'faggot' or 'fag' became synonomouse with 'a poor substitute', hence:

 

lumps of mashed-up low-quality animal products covered in gravy = 'faggot'; poor substitute for meat.

 

the servant-boys that prefects used to have in old public schools = 'faggot'; poor substitute for a servant.

 

ciggaretts = 'fags' (in the uk); poor substitute for cigars

 

homosexual man's boyfriend = 'faggot'; poor substitute for a woman.

 

also, there was apparently a lot of homosexuality between the prefects and their 'fag boys', which no-doubt enforsed the assosiation of homosexuals and the word faggot.

 

thus ends dak's ectylomogical monologue on the origins of the word 'faggot'. hope you enjoyed.

[Thomas Kirby]

In many cases' date=' cited here (which apparently you've just neglected to read), we don't.

 

Jessica's law, for example, which sentences adults to 25 years to life on the first offense, only applies to violent acts against children ages 12 or less. It doesn't affect minors, and it doesn't affect the kind of "hey she looked 18 to me" events we've talked about here.

 

This thread is another example -- the restriction on hurricane shelters only applies to those who have been specifically prohibited from contact with minors, which is not the case in those "hey she looked 18 to me" cases.

 

And yet you steadfastly refuse to agree upon the value of even these laws, erroneously clinging to your argument that we shouldn't enact these laws because they are of the "hey she looked 18 to me" variety, in spite of the fact that it's been explained to you, with supporting links, from the very first post in this thread, that that is not the case.

 

Well?[/quote']

 

I do not agree with the perceived value of sex offender type laws because they were abused from the start and they will be abused increasingly. I do not even believe that these special laws will have any useful effect in the hypothetical world that they might have been designed for, in which laws are not abused, which matters little because this is the real world in which laws are abused as soon and as frequently as possible.

 

Dak: Why do you refer to pedophilia as "potentially" damaging? It's worth putting someone in jail for 25 to life for doing "potentially damaging" things to a child?

 

There's another statement I have to make here. A person must not fear being called some kind of sexual pervert and hurt for it if he or she disagrees with any given law. I think that there are legitimate reasons for disagreeing with all laws banning different forms of sex. I don't think that someone has to be a pedophile or a homosexual or anything else to have legitimate disagreement with those laws. "Sex" isn't that damned special. Why should I HAVE to agree with every dippy thing that someone comes along with when they chant "it's for the children"? Why can't I say what I think, that it has become an idiot refrain that basically means "we plan to stick a gun in your face if you don't comply with our wishes"? An alternate meaning is "if you are a good person, you will send us a good fraction of your bank accounts."

 

You would think that all this dippy nonsense wouldn't affect me, but whether I even like pornography or not, I want the freedom to look at pictures even if they make me vomit without the fear that some grown-up school bully is going to kick down my door and make up nasty stories about me. I flat don't give a damn what age Traci Lords was when she made her first movies, it isn't blasted worth putting an end to a man's useful life if he runs across a tape that someone forgot to burn. I also don't think that people who are looking at young images have to have pedophile tendencies. When a legal system hangs that on someone, it is corrupt. When an individual hangs that on someone that automatically, he or she is failing to think with an effective IQ of over 60. And even if the person has the tendencies, by God I think that he should have to actually commit a crime against a child before he is put in jail or otherwise punished.

[beautyundone]

personally, i don't see the point to pornography in the first place. but then again, that could be because i'm a female. however, that's rather off-topic. moving on...

 

i think that the policy regarding no child pornography is perfectly reasonable. those that look at child pornography (in which the child is obviously still a child) will undoubtedly have an unnatural attraction towards children. these people are much more likely to become child molesters than your average joe who looks at regular porn. child pornography only fuels the attraction towards the children for an individual, thus making them more likely to offend. (though i suppose one could argue the other way around, saying that it gives them an outlet for their desires, but we won't go there.) i also believe that, because children cannot make decisions for themselves and are not yet legal adults (obviously), they should not be allowed to participate in pornography. this is like saying that children should be able to vote or drink, none of which are allowed. i believe that many of the rules regarding child pornography are set in place because the children are often unwillingly forced to do it and are sometimes sold into the porn industry, as opposed to it being their own personal choice. (what kid would CHOOSE to do something like that?)

 

by arresting those possessing child pornography, we are:

-stopping potential sex offenders

-stopping offenders period (they know it's against the law)

-decreasing demand for child pornography

-thus decreasing production

-thus preventing children from being subject to participating in the porn industry.

 

people who lust after children are sick. imo, ANYONE who lusts after children should be locked up.

[Dak]

I do not agree with the perceived value of sex offender type laws because they were abused from the start and they will be abused increasingly. I do not even believe that these special laws will have any useful effect in the hypothetical world that they might have been designed for, in which laws are not abused, which matters little because this is the real world in which laws are abused as soon and as frequently as possible.

 

The fact that some people will break laws does not make the laws worthless. Otherwize, we may as well all become nihalists, and lay back and accept anarchy. (yes, i know thats an appeal to concequence, but im just illlustrating a point -- what should we do, not make laws becuase criminals might break them? thats why we enforse laws, with police and whatnot).

 

Dak: Why do you refer to pedophilia as "potentially" damaging?

 

Bow to accuracy. Paedophillia is not damaging in 100% of cases.

 

It's worth putting someone in jail for 25 to life for doing "potentially damaging" things to a child?

 

Yes. Because its recless, and has an unacceptably high chance of damaging the kid.

 

analogy: if i was to throw axes at childeren, then im sure that i would end up in jail, even if all the axes missed. on account of it being a dangerouse and irrisponcible act, which could potentially have harmed the childeren.

 

just to clarify: when i say paedophile, i mean someone who has sex with childeren; when i say 'potentially damaging', i am refering to the sex-act itself, not any associated behaviours.

 

There's another statement I have to make here. A person must not fear being called some kind of sexual pervert and hurt for it if he or she disagrees with any given law. I think that there are legitimate reasons for disagreeing with all laws banning different forms of sex. I don't think that someone has to be a pedophile or a homosexual or anything else to have legitimate disagreement with those laws.

 

I agree.

 

I also don't think that people who are looking at young images have to have pedophile tendencies.

 

Hang on... assuming that were talking within a sexual context here, i fail to see how someone could chose to look at sexual images of childeren and not be a paedophile.

 

When a legal system hangs that on someone, it is corrupt. When an individual hangs that on someone that automatically, he or she is failing to think with an effective IQ of over 60. And even if the person has the tendencies, by God I think that he should have to actually commit a crime against a child before he is put in jail or otherwise punished.

 

Yeah, well, there are two different cases that i see here.

 

1/ someone watching a kiddies program, like grange-hill or neighbours or something, and getting sexually excited over the kids. Grim as it may seem, i agree that these people should not be persecuted (as long as thats all that theyre doing), as it doesnt actually hurt anyone.

 

2/ someone watching kiddie porn. This is entirely different. kids actually suffer in the making of these pictures/films/whatever, and by watching them you are supporting the industry, in one way or another, and so are indirectly responcible for the kids suffering.

 

compare with someone who buys a snuff film. Theyd be supporting an industry that kills people. hardly a blame free act.

[Dak]

child pornography only fuels the attraction towards the children for an individual, thus making them more likely to offend. (though i suppose one could argue the other way around, saying that it gives them an outlet for their desires, but we won't go there.)

 

Slippery slope fallicy

 

Its not always untrue, but it isnt nessesaraly true just because it superficially seems to make sence; in the abscence of any evidence, its just as likely that viewing images would sate their desire as it is that it would stimulate it.

 

If somethings worth getting upset about, then its worth getting upset about in an accurate and factually correct way