No, it’s not. We went over this in the other thread, which is why the law in AL (like most states) differentiates the crime of sexual molestation of children under 12 vs over 12. It’s not so much the use of the word, which people can be sloppy about, it’s the assertion that an attraction to teen-age girls is something that is a “sickness that can’t be cured” in the way that attraction to pre-pubescent children is. This part:
That’s true, John , In Alabama, Moore is not* legally* a pedophile.
Look, attraction to a Traci Lords before she revealed her true age is one thing. But some 14yo girls are very youthful.
The onset of puberty varies among individuals. Puberty usually occurs in girls between the ages of 10 and 14, while in boys it generally occurs later, between the ages of 12 and 16.
So, 14 can be pre-pubescent. Medically.
If your criterion for voting is that the person must be able to be “cured of being attracted to teenagers”, then you are going to have a very short list of possible candidates for whom to vote.
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Yes. We all do fucked up things.
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No, god no. Him being a pedophile didn’t help, but I really detested him long before that. He is a theocrat who doesn’t respect the constitution or the rule of law. He is a wealthy, western version of the taliban.
On top of that, he is a general republican. Plutocratic, hostile to minorities and the weak, etc.
Hell no.
Yep.
Even in our hyper-partisan era, almost every Senator votes against his party once in a while. Why hide it?
Jones could have mercilessly attacked Moore. He didn’t, and he won
No, the criterion is that he never acts upon his attraction to a 14 year old. Nobody can control who they are attracted to, everybody can control how they respond to that attraction. Molesting a child is such an incomprehensibly selfish act that one time is sufficient to be written off forever.
Of course I wouldn’t vote for him, even if he had never molested a child. His values aren’t remotely close to my own.
Sorry. “You’re” in that case referred specifically to BobLibDem wrt his post #33. It probably looked like the “generic you” out of context, but I was engaging in an ongoing commentary on that post. If you look at my post #34, I specially addressed the issue emphasized in your post.
I was just trying to say (kind of in agreement) that his attraction is not the issue, his behavior is - and the behavior ship sailed when he terrorized that young girl. No longer molesting children is not sufficient for me. I don’t think you can come back from that.
I can understand the objection to classifying someone who is attracted to 14 year olds to someone who is attracted to 8 year olds. But I’m also really uncomfortable with classifying someone who actively pursues 14-16 year old kids to someone who is attracted to “teenagers”–a group that includes 18-19 year olds.
Moore didn’t pursue a woman who happened to be an especially mature looking 14 year old. He seemed to have a definite preference for girls no older than 16. That’s very different than being into “barely legal” shit. It’s the difference between 8th graders/high school Freshmen and high school seniors/college Freshmen. If girls** age out** of being attractive to a person once they hit the upper half of high school, that person has very different issues than a person who likes “Sorority Girls Gone Wild” style stuff.
Flouting, I think, right?
Anyway, to the OP:
- I suppose
- As everyone else has pointed out, he still has no respect at all for the rule of law, which is a problem for a congressman. Plus, I think I disagree with all of his positions.
OP: Do you agree that he has problems respecting the rule of law? He was fired twice for disregarding legal commands from the Supreme Court. How could you vote for someone like that?
OK. Agreed.
That’s fine, as long as the same standard is applied to all politicians, regardless of their party affiliation. Personally, I wouldn’t make that kind of statement, but it’s something I would just agree to disagree about.
You can bet I apply the standard of not voting for people who molest children to all politicians.
And I agree with Manda Jo, I don’t think ephebophilia can be equated with the natural tendency of most men to be attracted to post-pubescent young women. As a victim of one such man, I feel pretty strongly about that. I always looked older for my age. It’s difficult to articulate how much it fucks up your sexuality when you become of interest to a predator the second you hit puberty. You don’t get to be a normal teen after that. And the fact that after the divorce, he immediately hooked up with a woman with a young teen daughter who immediately began having behavioral problems… No. This is a special kind of scumbag, not anything like most men. We’re talking about predatory behavior on the level of pedophilia.
I’m not really interested in or even prepared to debate the issue of ephibophilia. My only point was to object to Bob’s statement, so if anyone wants to affirmatively agree with him, please do so. What I’m not interested in is a debate involving “how dare you contradict someone who said something bad about Moore, regardless of whether it was true or not”.
I will, however, affirm what I said in my first post in this thread: I would not vote for Moore regardless of how contrite he was about the abusive behavior in his past because he’s a right-wing religious nut-case.
It took me forever to parse this. I’m also not interested in doing that. I have no strong feelings one way or another about what Bob said other than agreeing with your argument that he’s not a pedophile. I don’t care whether Moore can be “cured” or not. What I disagreed with was your characterization of ephebophilia as some offshoot of normal male attraction. I don’t think it is. It’s something different. If you don’t want to have that conversation, okay, but it wasn’t a knee-jerk defense of Bob.
Now plenty of people have this sickness and choose not to act on it. That’s my standard for a politician or anyone else. “Don’t do profoundly harmful things just because you really want to.” Who someone desires is irrelevant to me. I only care what they do. This and other stuff about how I would never forgive Moore wasn’t meant as a direct response to you, but in response to the OP, and in response to the broader question about how we make judgments about who to vote for. I don’t care if he’s sorry. It’s such a profound lapse in morals and judgment he’s relinquished all claim to being fit for office.
I did not say that ephebophilia was just normal male attraction. I’m not qualified to judge whether the guy is an ephebophile or not, so I’m not sure he is. Whatever he did, he seems to have left that in the past and married someone age-appropriate. That doesn’t prove his not one, but I think the burden of proof is on those making the accusation. Just reading the wikipedia article, it doesn’t look like ephonophilia is a recognized mental disorder, so it’s kinda like calling someone a pervert. I’m happy to say that, at least while he was chasing after teens, the guys was a pervert. I don’t know if he’s still one or not, but I tend not to brand someone for life for doing something bad.
It is my understanding that ephebophilia is attraction to underage post-pubescent girls. I would say Moore is a hebephile, which is closer to pedophilia. I also don’t think anyone ever really gets over who they are attracted to beyond a certain age. If he was attracted to mid-pubescent women then, he still is now.
Not that attraction is the actual issue. It is the serial sexual assault, and, yes, the child molestation. Repentance a long time ago, followed by actual evidence that he’d made restitution and worked not to ever do it again, would be helpful. But an apology now that he got caught? That would just seem like pandering to me.
And, once known, and it’s known he was never actually punished, I consider it the responsibility of the public not to vote for him and thus say that his actions were no big deal. If an action is sufficiently bad, then, yes, I am willing to say you can’t come back from that.
I’m not accusing anyone in this thread of this, but I’ve definitely seen people who use the whole “forgiveness” concept not because they actually are forgiving a grievous wrong, but because they never really saw it as that big a deal in the first place. For something this bad, I think forgivness requires what I stated above: an unforced apology, making restitution, and actual concrete steps and actions made to prevent it from happening again.
In case of sexual abuse, restitution means criminal prosecution or a quite punitive settlement, BTW. Without that, Moore is sunk, even with an apology.
Edit: and, no, in this particular case, even if he had never done this at all, I would not support Moore, for the other stuff he’s done. He was removed from being a judge twice for a reason. And, yes, he seems rather stupid and abuses the concept of Christianity.
There are 9 known complaints of a sexual nature against Moore. One of those complaints was from a girl under the age of consent, 8 were from girls above the age of consent. I’m no expert on diagnosing the difference between ephibophlia and hebephilia, but maybe someone who is can explain how it would work.
Until our expert arrives, I’ll stick with pervert and leave the technical terms to them.
I think the real issue is that he consistently pursued really young girls/women. 16 and under. Saying “Lots of me are attracted to teenagers” and lumping that sort of attraction in with being attracted to 18-19 girls risks normalizing his behavior–like it was only a technical violation of an arbitrary law. Like the issue is that he indulged in something most men in theirn30s desire but manage to resist. But a preference for girls 16 and under strongly suggests that not being fully mature was the reason these girls were attractive to him, not an incidental fact.
On the first question: I suppose it would improve my view of him, but only by some minuscule amount. I pay almost no attention to words of apology in such matters. I want to see actions.
On the second question: Why would I ever want to vote for anyone who’s made such a career out of incessantly assaulting Christian values? I can think of few things more unChristian than the assertion that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of morality. Christianity, like nearly every major religion, asserts that God (or the gods or whoever) created humans with consciences, such that we can discern for ourselves what is right and wrong, even without engraved stone tablets.
On the ephebophilia/hebephilia sidetrack/hijack: (a) ISTM there is no real hard and fast universally agreed distinct definition that separates those two terms and (b) IasloSTM that the “philia” bit implies either a dominant preference or a compulsion. As opposed to folk who see ALL females upon puberty become fair game (And BTW I saw much fewer references to the Southern Rural stereotype than I initially expected when this broke.)