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Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

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Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#181

Post by astral303 »

nv-vn wrote: post #119
bsder wrote: post #47

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…

I wouldn't call anyone egregiously stupid for engaging in normal sexual activity. If the vast majority of teens doing so have gone unprosecuted, why should someone assume that something might happen to them for the same action? A risk/reward analysis will not make it seem like such a bad idea, so I can't see what part makes the teen particularly stupid here.

Religious-based prohibitionism of premarital sex is a real problem in America. It's one of the frontiers of the culture war. So, please, donate to your local Planned Parenthood.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#182

Post by deorder »

wildmusings wrote: post #159
gh02t wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singer is definitively pro-abortion, for basically the reasons I mentioned. It's not terribly nuanced, it follows pretty directly from his basic ideas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Abortion.2C_eutha... I'm not super expert about it either (at best a casual armchair philosopher), but from what I know Singers philosophy isn't specifically about suffering, it's about weighing interests . He assumes that th…

Just to clarify, Singer believes that you should be allowed to kill babies for years after birth.

I discovered last year that people are actually promoting this. I've been attacked by people because I do not agree with late-term (for no medical reason) and after-birth abortion:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_natur...

It is almost in the same line of thinking that infants are not capable of feeling pain and why some operations on them were done without anesthesia:

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surge...

I believe some operations on infants are still being done without it:

http://gizmodo.com/why-are-so-many-newborns-still-being-deni...

"to this day, many procedures are performed on newborns without the benefit of analgesics. That’s largely because of an enduring misconception in the medical community that newborns don’t feel pain like adults."

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#183

Post by [deleted] »

abpavel wrote: post #174
rothbardrand wrote: post #49

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.

[deleted]

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#184

Post by visarga »

lr4444lr wrote: post #103
userbinator wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most would agree there is a profound difference between a 23 year old dating a 17 year old ...or even a 17.997-year-old. The problem is that the world is mostly continuous, not discrete, but laws try to be the latter.

Laws need to be objective to avoid bias and corruption. The vagueness of continuity you speak of manifests in the sentencing. Maybe the mandatory minimum for sex offender registration is too high, but the actual conviction needs to hold.

> mandatory minimum

This means a judge can't use his/her discretion to forgive, imposing extra toughness on the accused, usually in absurd ways, such as 30 years in prison for stealing a doughnut because of 2 prior similar petty theft convictions. But a Wall Street type could abuse billions of dollars and go free. I think this kind of cookie cutter justice is perverse and just serves to wage social war and fill up prisons.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#185

Post by ageofwant »

lr4444lr wrote: post #103
userbinator wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most would agree there is a profound difference between a 23 year old dating a 17 year old ...or even a 17.997-year-old. The problem is that the world is mostly continuous, not discrete, but laws try to be the latter.

Laws need to be objective to avoid bias and corruption. The vagueness of continuity you speak of manifests in the sentencing. Maybe the mandatory minimum for sex offender registration is too high, but the actual conviction needs to hold.

By the time it comes to "conviction" it is far, far too late. By then several lives have been ruined, reputations damaged, and thousands of dollars of fees spent. To argue that the sentencing somehow fixes the inhumanity of the laws is utter rubbish.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#186

Post by ageofwant »

TheCowboy wrote: post #118
jliptzin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend's grandfather was 21 and his grandmother was 15 when they first started dating. Needless to say if laws were as crazy back then as they are now my friend wouldn't exist as his grandfather would have been on a registry and in prison instead of starting a family and a 60 year long marriage.

Examples like this aren't useful or practical. Society's ethics can and do evolve over time. It's not "crazy" for someone who is 21 to not be dating someone who is 15. You're arguing that the grandfather would have broken the law regardless of it existing, and is therefore innocent. Or that because a child was born out of this relationship, and grew just fine, that it makes it ethical and permissible in the general c…

You imply that that ethics 'evolve' always in a positive and constructive direction. This is clearly false, especially with the subject matter at hand. You also link 'ethics' and 'lawfulness' which is pretty naive, at best.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#188

Post by mirimir »

Iv wrote: post #122
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111

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…

As others have noted, the age of consent is far less than 18 in much of the world. Indeed, in parts of the US. Or at least, it was no more than a couple decades ago.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#189

Post by myrandomcomment »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #187

This is 100% mis-read of what this said. The court said "this is the way the law is written, it sucks, but this is the law as written."

Also as a follow up - this is our fault. We elect the people that write the laws. The courts job it is to check the law constitutional. We have this illusion that the court is there to think better then those we elect, which is not the case. If you are outraged by this then pay some attention to who you vote for.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#190

Post by sarah2079 »

dcow wrote: post #68
mjevans wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be so much easier if as a society we agreed that everyone should have healthcare, and that reproduction should be a choice positively made, instead of the default consequence of sex.

Exactly. There's nothing additional that abortion solves that isn't covered by responsible use of contraception except maybe someone changing their mind or I guess more fairly having their economic situation change such that rearing a child is no longer the socially responsible choice. But I think that's something we're equip to handle via other means (adoption).

Failure rates for contraception are surprisingly high, even if you are using it responsibility. 1% is common, but that's not even over a person's lifetime, that's PER YEAR. That make lifetime failure rate more like 20%.

On top of that some people can't tolerate the most effective hormonal birth control methods methods.

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