171–180 of 315 posts
Because of the potential for selective or punitive prosecution I'm in favour of legalising teen sexting. Obviously the law needs to be carefully drafted to avoid allowing child exploitation, but it should absolutely not be possible to prosecute normal sexually-active teens under child pornography statutes. “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.
> “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough. Especially because it's been so horribly abused in the past. Take this case in Manassas, Virginia. 17 year old texts a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. The police find out, charge the 17 year old with distributing child pornography, and take pictures of his penis saying they need it for evidence[1]. They then…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is hard to do in practice. I've heard someone vehemently defend a relationship they had at 14 with an older fellow. They categorized it as a positive experience that helped them discover themselves. It may have even been 13; I forget. Was it a crime? It might. be tempting to say no, but laws do exist as a deterrent.
The idea that informed consent is a characteristic that magically appears in full at 18 or 20 is ridiculous. Obviously some people acquire it earlier. Some much later. Problem is, judges and police have yet to design an objective maturity test, so instead they use an age threshold, easy to test, objective but arbitrary. Like the map is not the territory, the law is not a perfect match to our moral landscape. It works…
Deciding that someone is both a rape victim and a rapist at the same time, for the same act, isn't an unfortunate sacrifice around the edge cases of heuristic reasoning. It's categorically insane.
States have typically balanced this against the desire to prohibit "relationships" with vast power differentials (i.e. between a child and a middle-aged adult) by carving out exceptions to statutory rape for consenting couples who are close in age. Others have just relied on police and prosecutors not to bring cases against teenage couples, and been mostly successful outside of a some newsworthy examples met with public outcry.
Because of the potential for selective or punitive prosecution I'm in favour of legalising teen sexting. Obviously the law needs to be carefully drafted to avoid allowing child exploitation, but it should absolutely not be possible to prosecute normal sexually-active teens under child pornography statutes. “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.
No victim means no crime. (Morally, I'm using the word "crime" here to refer to a moral crime.) But it also means that the prosecution of such non-crimes is itself a crime, meaning the "guilty" party here is the victim and everyone involved in their prosecution, up to and including the supreme court, is criminal.
This isn't true in the least. Jaywalking and speeding can be done in a world with "population: 1", yet caught on camera would constitute a crime.
What is the rationale behind defining child porn age The first case is something that actually happened to a friend of mine. He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life. Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?
The weirdest thing is that we deem people as legal adults at 18. If you look at neurological science, crime rates, and even car insurance rates then it's fairly easy to see that the brain has not fully matured by age 18 in most people. Sure, a person's capacity for logic/reason has matured but usually that happens around 15 anyway. Inhibition of risky behavior and thus the ability to make sound decisions definitely h…
Depends on whether maturity is reached 25 years after birth, or 7 years after you start to make your own decisions.
Because of the potential for selective or punitive prosecution I'm in favour of legalising teen sexting. Obviously the law needs to be carefully drafted to avoid allowing child exploitation, but it should absolutely not be possible to prosecute normal sexually-active teens under child pornography statutes. “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.
> “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough. Especially because it's been so horribly abused in the past. Take this case in Manassas, Virginia. 17 year old texts a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. The police find out, charge the 17 year old with distributing child pornography, and take pictures of his penis saying they need it for evidence[1]. They then…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough. Especially because it's been so horribly abused in the past. Take this case in Manassas, Virginia. 17 year old texts a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. The police find out, charge the 17 year old with distributing child pornography, and take pictures of his penis saying they need it for evidence[1]. They then…
This case is such atrocious abuse of power. The fallout from this case did not affect nearly enough people. Think of all the enablers of this behavior at the various stages. The patriarchy has much of America in their clutch at various levels of so-called "public" service. Why was this man never reported? Everyone covered up for him. Standard operating procedure for America.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-ends-child-marriage-ra...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's a quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results... It's the definition of insanity. The abortion topic is interesting because we're talking about how we socially define a human life in a realm where science can't help at all (or at least has failed to give a concrete answer thus far). If it was an accepted truth that human life begins at conception, then abortion is murder. Even our laws…
I think the abortion discussion is much easier than its made out. I like Peter Singers approach to ethics which sets the goal to be avoiding of suffering. Now the question is easy: at what stage of the pregnancy can the being suffer? The entire abortion conversation is completely ruined by most people wearing glasses colored with existence bias.
Suffering has nothing to do with it, it's just a biological motivator for both parent and child to escape pre-reproduction death with insignificant side-effects like really, really missing a nice car or just an ice cream.
But while this topic is naturally highly dependent on "local" social rules, I think modern society should put responsibility and planning on the first place. If someone is not very sure that s/he can raise, care of, or simply enjoy the parenthood, it must be okay to abort it, unless that overweights all imaginable social programs. Like killing born children, for one. With modern society atomization and precision, abortion absolutely falls into "not your business" category in most places, unless one has very conservative and/or intrusive religious views, which is a bad thing itself, given how many completely different minds have to interact now on daily basis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No victim means no crime. (Morally, I'm using the word "crime" here to refer to a moral crime.) But it also means that the prosecution of such non-crimes is itself a crime, meaning the "guilty" party here is the victim and everyone involved in their prosecution, up to and including the supreme court, is criminal.
> No victim means no crime This isn't true in the least. Jaywalking and speeding can be done in a world with "population: 1", yet caught on camera would constitute a crime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, child porn is legal as long as both parties are involved? That doesn't work either. All you will wind up doing is having people magically always have only two people involved. And "teen sexting" isn't even uniform: a 10-year-old sexting a 16-year-old is generally a problem while a 17-year-old sexting an 18-year-old likely isn't. Your opponents in kiddie porn are two different sets of people: 1) the egregiously st…
Which is better, to have a few horrifically competent go free or have a few innocent teenagers on the sex offender registry?