Another Twist in the Issue of Sexual Predators

[beautyundone]

Slippery slope fallicy

 

Its not always untrue' date=' 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 [/quote']

 

 

i'm rather confused... lol. i stated it from both potential views and included another possible argument. that's all.

[Dak]

Ah, misunderstood: i thought you were casually dismissing the idea that it could do anything other than increase the likelyhood of offending (it was the 'we wont even go there' bit that did it, but i see what you meant now).

 

apologies, my bad .

[beautyundone]

oh, i see what you thought. yes, i suppose i did word that rather oddly. oh well.

 

apology accepted

[Thomas Kirby]

Dak, it's not people breaking the laws that I was talking about, although it could be argued that when someone uses a law to penalize someone inappropriately, that law has been broken. "Abuse" of a law means things like using it to give out excessive penalties for innocuous actions, stretching its meaning to cover things it wasn't meant to cover, or just plain pretending that someone violated it because they can't prove that they didn't. Some laws are abused by using them at all, even if that is more an abuse of the idea of law and order than of the particular law.

 

Why compare the purchase of child pornography with the purchase of a snuff film? If as some people say the sexual activities are somehow harmful to the children, isn't that bad enough? Why the need to attempt to exaggerate the extent of the problem by throwing in something that isn't part of the genre? Also, simulated child pornography would get people thrown in jail, and these days it is becoming more and more possible to simulate anything, even if somewhat inaccurately. Hollywood would lose more than half its income if it were forced to get rid of simulated snuff. We buy and rent a lot of movies in which people are killed in all sorts of ways.

 

The abuses I most object to include calling it "rape" as if someone held a knife to a 14-year old person's throat. I know it's on the books that a prosecutor gets to do that, but I still think it's an abuse. I don't know myself anyway how a man can get in bed with a 14 year old girl or boy without wanting to be a hundred miles away and without acting on that desire, but I think that the girl or boy know whether they want to be there. I don't know how they can stand it either. If I were them I would want to be TWO hundred miles away. Even so, there are worse things that are done to teenagers without their consent, worse abuses of their free will and their humanity, and a lot of the problem that I have with such encounters is because of massive pain and emotional trauma that were inflicted on me as a teenager. It would seem that I could very easily be flipped to support of "statutory rape" laws because of how much I hated many adults when I was a teenager. But this is beginning to ramble.

 

I think that the McMartin preschool case was no accident, and no act of incompetence on the part of the prosecutors, unless you consider the deliberate disregard of all proper procedures to be incompetence. The message of that case was that the prosecutors wanted the ability to put anyone in jail they wanted, and mark them up for life, using secret evidence, non-credible evidence, nonsensical evidence, non-credible witnesses, and criminally wrong methods. This isn't what I would call a competent prosecutor. I also wouldn't call the child protective services of that region competent. I would call those people, the prosecutors and the child protective services people, vicious, without morals, and a danger to society. Here's a link from a moderately credible source, Court TV I have to ask, why did they go through that production? One isolated nutcase cannot make a herd of responsible intelligent people do anything like that. If she can, they are not responsible intelligent people. They are stupid or vicious, or stupid and vicious. There are a lot of people who mistake stupid, vicious thoughts and actions for intelligent thought and responsibility.

 

Here is a quotation of a statement by the mother of the child who started the case: Lawrence Wrightsman reports that Judy said her son had seen a live baby beheaded and Ray Buckey fly. You have to wonder who could have followed through on a program with such auspicious beginnings. No one is that stupid or that unconscious. If these people are actually taking this kind of stuff seriously, they are dangerously insane. I'm not talking about "potential" danger anymore, I'm talking about a pogrom in which a community was torn apart, people lost their businesses and homes, went to jail for charges that should not have been credible in any court in the world, and it was all touched off by one insane idiot.

 

Somewhere in all of these messes that I read about, I lost the urge to hang on to these laws against sex. If there is a law severely punishing men who have intercourse with minors, and I can see some good in that, but this law's only use seems to be to punish people who haven't even done that, it's really hard to hang on to any perception of its usefulness. It's a very nasty feeling to have vicariously participated in numerous witch-hunts conducted by people who are not my friends, and whose brethren have in fact been my worst enemies. The same people who would, as they did in the McMartin preschool case, deliberately falsely accuse people of actions that aren't even considered possible are the people who slap children around in class. The people who did that exploited the children to cause a mess of trouble. The same kind do contrive reasons to beat and otherwise torture children in school. It's the same exact mentality. You cannot expect vicious people to be vicious to adults and not vicious to children. They can put up a pretty good pretense. Some of the most vicious teachers I had in school had my mother completely snowed.

 

The law should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that actual harm was done. Every time something like this happens a measure of protection of civil rights is stripped away. The goal is to reach a state where "the law" doesn't have to prove anything, it doesn't have to use credible witnesses, it doesn't have to make a case, it just points and shoots. They cry "it's for the children" and we just give up thinking that justice should still be forced to go through its proper process. The theory that this somehow helps justice is just about as viable as the theory that we should just shoot burning gasoline out the tailpipes of our cars to power them and bypass the use of the motors and transmissions.

 

It isn't a fair trade when laws that protect some children from some molesters give other molesters the chance to damage the lives of many children and adults at a time. The "other molesters" I am talking about are the only people we have to enforce the laws against child molestation. Whatever laws we approve go through them before they have an effect. If they are unable to administer those laws fairly or intelligently, we might as well not have them make the attempt. We must also be prepared to accept full responsibility for tragedies like the McMartin preschool case. Instead of that I read a lot of excuses. If those prosecutors haven't been put in jail by now, no one has taken responsiblity.

 

It's tempting to make this quote my signature:

Priests who believed in satanic conspiracies held meetings with parents to educate them about the risks of child abuse. Particularly dangerous, the parents were told, were those caregivers that appeared kind and normal.

 

And you know, people, these children will grow up to be adults. What kind of world do we want them to live in as adults? We can't be careless about that in favor of attempting to destroy anyone who might want to have sex with them.

 

And another note to throw in with this: In this case, in similar cases, and overall, I think that we have the same mixture of nutcases on all sides.

[Pangloss]

Interesting points. It's a shame you want to use them as excuses to justify throwing out the baby with the bathwater, making your "solution" no better than that of the extreme right-wingers who want everyone who even looks funny at a child thrown in jail for life.

[Thomas Kirby]

It's a lot more like I'm in the position of trying to hand out guns to people in the hope that they will use those guns to protect me. Those people act like idiots, shoot the wrong people, and are highly ineffective at actually protecting me, my property, or my children. I might as well not be letting them have guns, but guess what? Once they have them, I can't get them back.

[beautyundone]

i got rather lost in the large essay thing you wrote, but from my understanding, you were saying that oftentimes people are charged unfairly for child molestation and things are blown out of proportion?

 

 

first of all, very few child molestation cases are actually reported, let alone prosecuted. and very few of those lead to convictions.

 

here are a few statistics i found (even if the above was not the point you were trying to make, i thought these would be interesting to share)

 

-1 in 4 girls will be sexually abused by age 18.

-1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by age 18.

-250,000-500,000 pedophiles reside in the United States.

-Convicted child molesters who abused girls had an average of 52 victims each. Men who molested boys had an astonishing average of 150 victims.

-The typical child sex offender molests an average of 117 children, most of whom do not report the offense.

-Long term effects of child abuse include fear, anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, inappropriate sexual behavior, poor self-esteem, tendency toward substance abuse and difficulty with close relationships.

-Sexual victimization may profoundly interfere with and alter the development of attitudes toward self, sexuality, and trusting relationships during the critical early years of development.

-Victimized children had IQ’s 13 points below the general average of 100, as well as severely depressed reading abilities.

-Sexually victimized children appear to be at a threefold risk for substance abuse.

-Approximately 95% of teenage prostitutes have been sexually abused.

-1 in 5 violent offenders serving time in a state prison reported having victimized a child.

-2/3 of all prisoners convicted of rape or sexual assault had committed their crime against a child.

-The typical offender is male, begins molesting by age 15, engages in a variety of deviant behavior, and molests an average of 117 youngsters, most of whom do not report the offense.

-More than 1/2 of all convicted sex offenders are sent back to prison within a year. Within 2 years, 77.9% are back.

-Like rape, child molestation is one of the most underreported crimes: only 1-10% are ever disclosed.

-The behavior is highly repetitive, to the point of compulsion, rather than resulting from a lack of judgment.

 

statistics courtesy of:

http://www.rasac.org/education/statistics.html

http://www.yellodyno.com/html/child_molester_stats.html

 

scary, huh?

[Phi for All]

here are a few statistics i found

Thank you for posting these statistics. In the future, please cite the sources so anyone who wants can confirm their accuracy. It's also good form to give credit to those who compiled the data.

[Thomas Kirby]

If it were true, it would be scary. I personally refuse to be converted to a true believer by threats (not made by you or anyone here, Beauty) against my reputation, my job, my life, or my comfort and peace in the afterlife. Most often people receive those, however they are sugar-coated, as the reasons to believe. These aren't good reasons. Also, Beauty, with all respect, a lot of these "white papers" are bunkum.

 

Science will go with whoever underwrites the funding. I wish it weren't true. Anyone who turns up positive effects of underage sex will lose their funding. If they're particularly unlucky, someone will also sandpaper their sensitive parts, douse them in turpentine, and set that turpentine on fire.

 

Also, I know where at least some of the biases, bad logic, and poor reporting are in the report you just gave me, Beauty Undone. One of the problems is that a report like this will inevitably merge the molestations of pre-pubescent children with sex with teenagers who are willing and able. Another problem, as I already said, is that only the negatives will be reported without allowing any mitigation by information of positive effects. For example, if someone finds that a small percentage of children who have some kind of sexual contact have lowered IQs, and that small percentage includes those who are physically raped before the age of six years old, and are exposed to street drugs, live in an impoverished neighborhood, and have missed a lot of school, all we are going to read is that children who were molested have lower IQs. We're not going to be told the results of a reading comprehension test applied, evenly weighted, to a representative sample of the population of humans who were molested as children. Some of these people, I have reason to know, are very intelligent and have very high reading skills.

 

If I wrote a book debunking all of the fallacies, I might well become one of the most hated humans in America. I would wind up with a label even worse than "faggot", and my books would probably be banned by author's name no matter what the subject matter or content. Were I someone who wrote books on scientific matters, I would have to give it a pass. Even the vanity publishers would probably lock me out.

 

No, I do not agree that some people are falsely charged with pedophilia and it's blown out of proportion. I firmly state that a lot of people are falsely charged with pedophilia on purpose, the prosecutors ride them and their lives into the ground as hard as they can, and they milk it for all it's worth. Even with the best face you could possibly put on it, in my book a prosecutor is still obligated to only present the court with cases where the charges are very likely to be true, not with cases where they might be able to trick up a conviction and the charges are extremely unlikely to be true.

 

One more thing I have to say is that most of the perpetrators of child abuse do not have sex with the children, and that these perpetrators do most of the damage, even to those who have been sexually molested. Most of what they do is simply beat people down, help out the school bullies, and make childhood a living hell. They also, and this is a minor fraction of the damage they do, put a guilt thing into people's heads that multiples the psychological damage of sexual molestation by a huge amount. These people are just as likely to be the ones who report sexual molestation at the same time they are damaging young minds. They also do it on purpose.

 

 

Here is another, separate point to ponder. What is a sheriff going to do when someone shows up at the shelter, the database is down, and he can't prove one way or the other if that someone is a sex offender or not? What if the supplicant can't produce ID? Anyone who can't be identified is refused shelter from the storm? Don't have ID, or it can't be run through the computer, you get sent out to take your changes with debris flying around at body-piercing velocities?

[beautyundone]

first of all, there is plenty of warning as to when a hurricane will hit, giving all people a good 48 hours to know for sure whether or not they should be seeking shelter/leaving their homes. it's not as if they are smack dab in the middle of the storm and being told to turn around and go back into it. if they've waited that long, they won't be able to make it to the shelter in that sort of weather.

 

i would know what kind of damage abuse can do to a child, but personally, i would rather be beaten down than raped. i don't know about you, but i consider rape/child molestation to be a much more personal and violating crime than any other form of abuse. true, children do not deserve to be subject to either form, but i believe that if they were faced with the choice, they would choose physical abuse as opposed to sexual.

 

i can't help but feel that you are trying to relate this to the MJ case talking about the lack of evidence some prosecutors have and the determination to prove someone did something wrong, even if they do not have sufficient reasons to believe so. are you relating it to that specific case? or is my mind just linking the two?

 

just curious, but i recall seeing something on the news the other day about a lawyer (i forget where the case was located, but i believe it was in the oklahoma/kansas area?) who was caught by police attempting to meet and have sexual relations with whom he believed to be a 14year old girl (in reality, it was an undercover cop), and it had been made clear to him that she was underage (ie she stated her age many times). then the judge, a friend of this lawyer, dismissed the case for ridiculous reasons, claiming that because it was not an actual child and the man had not actually had sexual relations with this 'minor'. i am strongly opposed to the judge's decision and believe it was simply because he was friendly with that lawyer that he let him off. so corruption in the justice system can go either way, you know. it's not just one-sided. anyhow, did anyone else hear about that?

[Pangloss]

Here is another' date=' separate point to ponder. What is a sheriff going to do when someone shows up at the shelter, the database is down, and he can't prove one way or the other if that someone is a sex offender or not? What if the supplicant can't produce ID? Anyone who can't be identified is refused shelter from the storm? Don't have ID, or it can't be run through the computer, you get sent out to take your changes with debris flying around at body-piercing velocities?[/quote']

 

 

Well at least you're starting to ask reasonable questions. Are you willing to consider the possibility that your reasonable questions have reasonable answers, or are you going to be dismissive no matter how thorough and complete the answers are that you are given?

 

At any rate, I don't know the answer to your question, but by the same token I'm not about to stop charging people with murder just because some people have been found to be innocent after being convicted. We work on it, we move forward, and we do the best we can. When we make mistake we don't beat ourselves up over it, we try to learn and improve.

 

You seem to want laws that protect people -- you said so yourself earlier in this thread -- and yet you're not willing to toss out those laws just because some people are erroneously charged. What's the difference?

 

I think that you should admit to everyone here is that it's not the laws that are bothering you, but the beliefs of the people (in your view) who are proposing them.

[Thomas Kirby]

Beautyundone, I also would dismiss the case where a man did not actually meet with a 14 year old girl and did not have sex with her. I agree with the judge's stated reasons. No actual 14 year old girl was involved. Deception by the police was involved. I doubt if the judge is honest enough to do this for everyone, though. Maybe the reason he did that was because he was friendly with the lawyer, not that he thought that the practice was wrong. This would be unfortunate. Among other things that I detest there are three major items. One is the rape of children. Another is drugs. The third is undercover police narcs. I detest narcs because they make the practice of law enforcement into a web of deception of humans and of judges and juries.

 

All this does not mean that I have to believe that there is a baby when I see bathwater. It also does not mean that I have to allow myself to blindly refuse to see when a law, an arrest, or a conviction are nonsense. I also can't refuse to call nonsense just because someone invokes the "it's for the children" clause. Things like the McMartin case have educated me that our prosecutors and child protective services don't know how to play right, so we need to take away their toys.

 

Pangloss, what is bothering me is not the laws but the deeds of the people who abuse them and deliberately maximise the unnecessary destruction of other humans to make names for themselves. It also bothers me that people go along with it.

[beautyundone]

however, the lawyer knowingly went ahead and pursued a sexual relationship with this girl. this is how many online predators are caught and kept from hurting other minors. most of these people are online stalkers. the police had conversations with the man talking about what he was going to do with the "girl" etc. he's a sick guy; he should have been in SOME kind of trouble. the fact that he happened to be a lawyer was pure luck for him. the fact that he had a buddy who was a judge was even more lucky.

 

i am unaware of the mcmartin case. would you be kind enough to provide me with a brief summary or a link to an article?

 

i am not quite sure what you're getting at. if you could summarize the point you are trying to make, it would be quite helpful. as of now, i have no earthly idea what you find wrong with prosecuting child molesters.

[mike90]

Probably in the minority here, but ive met a lot of sexually abused people and i knoww the damage it causes. They are another portion of societie that has been forgotten. Id have true sex offenders executed if I had it my way. Every time they reoffend is another innocents life pretty much ruined. And i value the lives of the innocent over the depraved

[beautyundone]

^ agreed

[Bettina]

^ agreed. Execute them.

 

Bettina

[Thomas Kirby]

Probably in the minority here, but ive met a lot of sexually abused people and i knoww the damage it causes. They are another portion of societie that has been forgotten. Id have true sex offenders executed if I had it my way. Every time they reoffend is another innocents life pretty much ruined. And i value the lives of the innocent over the depraved

 

That doesn't mean that you can correctly assume that every sexual act with someone who is underage is abuse. It is also very possible to abuse someone's sexuality without any overtly sexual behavior or illegal activities. Compulsory sexual morality is perpetrated by a system of physical and mental abuse that is all but invisible but causes tremendous damage to its victims. Yes, this damage is like the damage caused by sexual abuse. I firmly believe that it is a form of sexual abuse. It is the most prevalent and the most damaging. It also makes us hate anyone who wants to try to help us out of the system of abuse.

 

To tell you the truth, if some child's life is ruined because someone groped him when he was seven years old, we've got something else wrong here. From my perspective what damage follows is because his family, his therapists, and maybe his teachers and law enforcement do things to him because he is no longer a human being to them. He is a "victim of sexual abuse" and he could very well be exposed to more injury from his caretakers because of the taint of sex than if he were groped a hundred times. Doesn't anyone stop to think just how hard the allegedly straight and moral caretakers of children are on them when it comes to sex? They can be more than abusive enough to cause all sorts of post-traumatic stress disorder. They will force the child to attempt to deceive himself about who abused him and how. They will simply blatantly tear the child apart mentally just to be sadistic. They will do sneaky little tricks to him just to hurt him. No apologies to anyone that this statement offends, but "sexual abuse" as I think it is defined by many of you is nothing special. Making it special takes something away from other survivors of abuse, distracts us from knowing anything useful about child abuse, and helps blind people to the real abuses that occur that are far more prevalent than overt sexual misconduct. So that is just one more reason not to give a care about whether someone's abuse is sexual or not. It is also a very good reason not to believe that every overtly sexual act is abuse.

[Bettina]

Could someone explain this to me? "Compulsory sexual morality"

 

Bettina

[Thomas Kirby]

Try Google. Also try "compulsory sex morality" and "Wilhelm Reich."

[Dak]

That doesn't mean that you can correctly assume that every sexual act with someone who is underage is abuse.

 

whilst i fundamentally agree with you, it is still pretty firmly established that sex with underage childeren carries a high risk of being damaging; hence the reluctance to allow it.

 

It is also very possible to abuse someone's sexuality without any overtly sexual behavior or illegal activities. Compulsory sexual morality is perpetrated by a system of physical and mental abuse that is all but invisible but causes tremendous damage to its victims. Yes, this damage is like the damage caused by sexual abuse. I firmly believe that it is a form of sexual abuse. It is the most prevalent and the most damaging. It also makes us hate anyone who wants to try to help us out of the system of abuse.

 

To tell you the truth, if some child's life is ruined because someone groped him when he was seven years old, we've got something else wrong here. From my perspective what damage follows is because his family, his therapists, and maybe his teachers and law enforcement do things to him because he is no longer a human being to them. He is a "victim of sexual abuse" and he could very well be exposed to more injury from his caretakers because of the taint of sex than if he were groped a hundred times. Doesn't anyone stop to think just how hard the allegedly straight and moral caretakers of children are on them when it comes to sex? They can be more than abusive enough to cause all sorts of post-traumatic stress disorder. They will force the child to attempt to deceive himself about who abused him and how. They will simply blatantly tear the child apart mentally just to be sadistic. They will do sneaky little tricks to him just to hurt him.

 

all quite true, and something that i feel needs to be adressed. If a child has sex and manages to survive the experience with no ill effects, then any subsequent treatment at the hands of the legal system should not carry the risk of being a potentually damaging ordeal; However...

 

 

No apologies to anyone that this statement offends, but "sexual abuse" as I think it is defined by many of you is nothing special. Making it special takes something away from other survivors of abuse, distracts us from knowing anything useful about child abuse, and helps blind people to the real abuses that occur that are far more prevalent than overt sexual misconduct. So that is just one more reason not to give a care about whether someone's abuse is sexual or not. It is also a very good reason not to believe that every overtly sexual act is abuse.

 

...this doesnt follow. Its a fact that sexual intercourse can be potentially damaging, and that the potential for causing damage (and the magnitude of that damage) is significantly greater in childeren than in adults; therefore, it has been banned.

 

wether or not you agree with peoples oppinions on sexual abuse, or wether or not it is damaging in 100% of cases, is irrelevant. A descision was made, based on the (by no means unfounded) assumption that banning sex below a certain age would be in the best interests of childeren as a whole, and -- like all other laws -- it has to be enforsed.

 

This nessesetates the concept of a 'sex offender', wether you like it or not.

 

Could someone explain this to me? "Compulsory sexual morality"

 

as i read it, it means sexual morality as defined by a consensus of the masses, and pushed onto everyone.

 

IE, you could argue that sosciety puts pressure on us to abstain from, say, sado-mashichism, due to the fact that it is 'deviant' and 'perverse'; or homosexuality for the same reasons.

 

Whilst id agree with thomas that there should be no reason that two consenting adults cant engage in S&M (or homosexuality) in the privacy of their own home, i dont see anything wrong with society trying to enforse the 'sexual moral' that 'sex with childeren is wrong'.

 

at least, thats how i read it; appologies if im wrong.

[Thomas Kirby]

whilst i fundamentally agree with you, it is still pretty firmly established that sex with underage childeren carries a high risk of being damaging; hence the reluctance to allow it.

 

How high? I heard that God won't let us look at the research. He has people running around gathering it up and burning it. If you want to declare that this is potentially harmful to underage children, prove it scientifically.

 

all quite true, and something that i feel needs to be adressed. If a child has sex and manages to survive the experience with no ill effects, then any subsequent treatment at the hands of the legal system should not carry the risk of being a potentually damaging ordeal; However...

 

...this doesnt follow. Its a fact that sexual intercourse with childeren can be potentially damaging, and that the potential for causing damage (and the magnitude of that damage) is greater in childeren; therefore, it has been banned.

 

Why does it even occur to you to use the term "potentially" damaging? You are using an equivocal statement as support for something that you consider to be unequivocal.

 

wether or not you agree with peoples oppinions on sexual abuse, or wether or not it is damaging in 100% of cases, is irrelevant. A descision was made, based on the (by no means unfounded) assumption that banning sex below a certain age would be in the best interests of childeren as a whole, and -- like all other laws -- it has to be enforsed.

 

I don't think that the best interests of the children were at the root of this "decision." Don't you just love that kind of phrase? "A decision was made" as if we regard legislators from a hundred or so years ago as the Lords of Cobol. Were four of them the fathers of all of us? It's really hard to take seriously the extreme high esteem that people seem to hold these people in.

 

This nessesetates the concept of a 'sex offender', wether you like it or not.

 

 

 

as i read it, it means sexual morality as defined by a consensus of the masses, and pushed onto everyone.

 

When I use the word "masses" in that context, I tend to leave out the "m".

 

 

IE, you could argue that sosciety puts pressure on us to abstain from, say, sado-mashichism, due to the fact that it is 'deviant' and 'perverse'; or homosexuality for the same reasons.

 

Whilst id agree with thomas that there should be no reason that two consenting adults cant engage in S&M (or homosexuality) in the privacy of their own home, i dont see anything wrong with society trying to enforse the 'sexual moral' that 'sex with childeren is wrong'.

 

at least, thats how i read it; appologies if im wrong.

 

I have the absolute God-given right to see something wrong with society trying to enforce that particular sexual moral. It doesn't even matter how I personally feel about the deed itself, and I personally feel that it's repulsive. One of my gripes is that people will attack me if I exercise that right.

[Dak]

How high? I heard that God won't let us look at the research. He has people running around gathering it up and burning it. If you want to declare that this is potentially harmful to underage children, prove it scientifically.

plonkety-plonk

 

Why does it even occur to you to use the term "potentially" damaging? You are using an equivocal statement as support for something that you consider to be unequivocal.

 

Im far too drunk to understand exactly what your last centance meant; however, i believe that i have already explained to you once that the reason that i use 'potentially damaging' is a bow to reality: paedophillia is not damaging in 100% of cases.

 

I don't think that the best interests of the children were at the root of this "decision." Don't you just love that kind of phrase? "A decision was made" as if we regard legislators from a hundred or so years ago as the Lords of Cobol. Were four of them the fathers of all of us? It's really hard to take seriously the extreme high esteem that people seem to hold these people in.

 

better than 'a descision was not made'.

 

seriously, huge amounts of our lives are regulated in such a maner for the benifit of all.

 

 

When I use the word "masses" in that context, I tend to leave out the "m".

 

I too am dysloxic

 

I have the absolute God-given right to see something wrong with society trying to enforce that particular sexual moral. It doesn't even matter how I personally feel about the deed itself, and I personally feel that it's repulsive. One of my gripes is that people will attack me if I exercise that right.

 

then i assume that you see no reason that rape should remain illegal/imoral. what with it being a societty-enforsed moral.

[Thomas Kirby]

Dak (feel free to slap me if I ever call you "Dax"), thank you for the link. Here is a quote from that link which is exactly in line with a lot of what I am saying:

consentual sex before the AoC does not usually result in long-lasting psycological harm.

 

Another gem:

the branding of the young participant of consentual pre-AoC sex as a victim can cause damage.

 

That is one of the things that I am saying. The practice is far more pervasive than that, though. Any child who is considered a "victim" of some kind of illness, syndrome, or whateverthehell is forced into a different world. In my own personal experience, making the child's life a living hell (and I'm not sure about the "living" part) is considered by many to be therapeutic. There is also a very large dose of sadism against any child who is considered to be different. One of the big differences between me and the rest was that I was not a bully, and I suffered for that one, too.

 

Saying that consent does not exist before a certain age is overly simplistic. When something legally does not exist, that does not mean that it does not exist. Someone decided that it did not exist. That decision was made at a time when it was still acceptable to hang black men for being suspected of having any relationship with white women. It was also acceptable to ban birth control information. So I could hardly say that this particular decision came from any particular kind of enlightenment. This was also at a time when most consensual sex between adults was banned.

 

You mentioned rape. Rape, real use of force against an individual to try to have sex with them, could be treated as aggravated assault and lose the special sexual component of the charges that so enhances the perception that a bad thing was done. I approve of charges that involve actual harm done to the individual, not "potential" harm which is largely imaginary, or things that cater to mass hysteria. I cannot approve of laws that pretend to protect people but push a moral agenda that is destructive of their freedoms.

[Pangloss]

Fear is such a remarkably powerful motivator.

[Thomas Kirby]

Fear also shuts down the intellect. Even a genius like me needs all the brains he's got.