The ACLU unfortunately doesn’t get to pick and choose the circumstances surrounding the facts of the cases it selects (it of course has the option of declining the case but was right IMHO to take up this one). They can’t all be as neat and tidy as Lawrence (cops bust two men in the bedroom of one of them while acting on a phony weapons tip). Sometimes cases are messy. IIRC Miranda of the eponymous decision and warning was facing a charge for a fairly brutal rape. Should his lawyers not stood for the principle because of the offense? I am unaware of the circumstances surrounding any earlier convictions of Limon. His convictions, and indeed his person, are irrelevant in the defense of the principle. Would I prefer that every case the ACLU takes has as its defendant a 100% innocent person? Sure. Since that isn’t going to happen, and since what is ultimately at stake is the principle and not the person, I find a way to live with it.
Are you daft? He said Matthew’s blow job “have already destroyed 3 young boys lives & probably shattered 4 families”. Would someone explain to me how a 14 year old getting a hummer destroys his life and shatters his family. If it’s not internalized homophobia that it’s sheer hysterics.
Certainly not. I was just chasing up what I saw as a pretender to the crown you saw fit to put on me. I needn’t agree with your assessment of me to do that. 'Sides, I thought all homophobes were meant to be gays in denial, which would make fitting the “internalised” label a lot easier.
A more rigorous attitude towards sexual contact with minors than you seem to be espousing? I’d have some harsh words for an 18-year-old male who messed around with a 14-year-old girl, but it’s not evidence of internalized heterophobia.
We must have a little talk about your readiness to fire the B-word from the hip someday, HB.
Mmm-hmm. And is that the generic “you” or are you directly addressing me, HB? Because if that piece of shrieking hysteria is meant for me directly then I’ll have to ask you to back some of that shit the fuck up, preferably in a form that will hold more water than a colander.
I almost put in a disclaimer that I was using the generic you. I didn’t because I thought everyone here was intelligent enough to gather that from the context. I see I underestimated your ability to be a stupid git.
No, I am not daft, I was trying to politely point out that you were over-reacting, and rather shrilly at that. You may feel free to insult my intelligence, but it ought to be clear that reasonable people can and will disagree in this case. An 18-year-old having sex with a 14-year-old is statutory rape and is bound to have adverse effects on those involved, hence the existence of consent laws. At most I would say that John’s post was mildly hyperbolic, whereas you see it as a clear-cut case of “internalised homophobia”, which I can only assume is equivalent to the “self-hating Jew” schtick that is so often trotted out in analogous conversations. You seem to offer no more justification for this accusation than that his opinion is at odds with yours, yet anyone who dares question you is a “dumb fucker”, “seriously obtuse”, “dimwitted” and so forth. If you’d stop screeching and try having a discussion every so often, you might find life a lot more pleasant.
Otto, I completely agree with you, and the ruling rendered by the Court of Appeals proves that this is an issue that needs to be rectified. As you say, unjust laws need to be overturned, and this can only be done with the cases available. In this instance, however, Limon seems to be far from a poster child for the campaign, so intense publicity will not necessarily bolster the case in public opinion, regardless of its basic correctness.
Cite? How is getting a hummer from someone not even 4 years older than you going to have an adverse effect on your life, much less “destroy” it and “wreck families”?
BTW, I don’t form my opinions of a poster based on a single post. I’ve not offered any evidence in support of my opinion of John and I don’t intend to either. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a reason to believe he has issues with internalized homophobia. Suffice to say that my opinion is based on many of his posts. Issues with other posters are long standing.
Just for the record, I wouldn’t trust you to lead a pack of wold cubs, much less a pack of Cub Scouts. This has nothing to do with your sexual orientation, of course; it’s because I think your abilities in the areas of reading comprehension and abstract reasoning are seriously limited.
- Rick
As already pointed out by Bricker & friedo, 14-year-olds can’t consent to sex. The age of consent in the US usually(*) ranges from 16 to 18.
You wanna lower the bar to 14? The age when sexual identity is in the beginning stages of development. The age when almost half my JV soccer team didn’t even start sprouting pubes yet? If that’s the case, then that Limon isn’t the only deviant whose name shows up in this thread.
Dumb fucker with internalized homophobia?
This coming from someone whose monthly credit cards statement is probably cluttered with charges from boysgettingplowed.com and teensweets.org. Do me a favor, at your next NAMBLA meeting, tell your perverted cohorts to eat shit til they choke on it.
I believe Matthew Limon’s victim was in the same group home for retarded children. By your argument, if Limon was hardly a “grown person” then I guess you’d have to concede the fact his 14 year-old victim was hardly a “pubescent boy”.
Damn straight I called him a deviant. A twisted predator who on at least 3 separate occasions took advantage of 3 different boys. I guess I could add warped and twisted to the list.
It’s only a blowjob?
That argument worked fine for Bill & Monica, but it doesn’t hold much water in this case when there’s a perpetrator and 3 victims. If you really believe these were victimless crimes, I suggest you do a little research into the emotional damage & suicide that results from molestation.
It’s you who’s the bigot. In my opinion, you’ve posted anti-human sentiments in this thread. You apparently don’t give shit Limon’s three victims or their families. All you seem to care about is the injustice against homosexuals in the Kansas state law. Using Limon as your poster boy is counterproductive. I’d feel the same way if this happened in (*)
Nevada: Where the AoC is 16 for heterosexuals and 18 for homosexuals
or in
New Mexico where the contrary is cited: 17 for heterosexuals & 13 for homosexuals.
A friend of mine works with the “developmentally disabled” and recently did a course abot the "developmentally disabled’ and the justice system. I read his course notes and it was very scary stuff - how police are able to extract false confessions, why these people are inclined to talk to police when shutting up would be enough to get them off, and how they are subject to harsher punishment due to their inability to understand what is going on.
I remember that the most heart rending thing I have ever seen on TV was a documentary about some poor bastard that Clinton allowed to be executed so that he would appear to be firm on the death penalty before his election as president. The guy had no idea about anything that was going on - he didn’t know what he had done, he didn’t know what was going to happen to him.
What broke me up was one of the guards saying that the poor bastard wanted to know if he would “go back to the same cell after he was executed.”
We are not as civilized as we imagine.
It rather depends on the individual. Some 14-year-olds may not be seriously affected, some undoubtedly will. The legislature has deemed that sufficient children under 16 are unready for sex to make it illegal. Maybe you think this is unnecessarily protective, but I do not see what it has to do with homophobia past the caveat of this KSA 21-3522 law, which not one person in this thread has suggested should remain in its present, discriminatory state. As for your extensively compiled opinions of other posters, perhaps if this is the case you should refrain from questions such as “[h]ow else would you interpret that other than internalized homophobia?” and accusations of stupidity when others fail to instantly reach the same conclusions as you.
Incidentally, both Limon and the other boy were residents at the same school for the developmentally disabled; since you were earlier adamant that this had significant bearing on Limon’s effective age, presumably the same reasoning applies to the other boy. Given that 14 is the lower limit for KSA 21-3522, your own reasoning would seem to argue against this verdict in any case.
OK, leaving aside the completely fucked up NAMBLA accusations, I gotta call bullshit on this. “Unable legally to consent to having sex” does not in any way, shape or form automatically translate into “took advantage of.” I have exactly zero information about any previous of Limon’s convictions, but everything I have read or heard about the case at hand is that the 14 year-old was not coerced or forced into doing anything against his will. He may not have been legally able to give consent, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t give his permission and was not a willing participant in the act.
I traded blow jobs (and more) on lots of occasions with a neighborhood boy from age 12 to age 14 and it’s a big regret of mine that I didn’t continue the sexual relationship longer than I did. Are you suggesting that I was raped repeatedly over the course of three years because I was not legally able to give consent? Of course he was the same age as I so I guess I’m a serial rapist myself by your lights.
Pray enumerate those “adverse effects”. While I generally agree that the age of consent laws exist for a reason, a certain amount of judgment and discernment need to be exercised as well, somehting I’m not seeing from anyone in this thread.
First, an 18-year-old having consensual sex with someone 4 years his junior is not in any way as serious a violation as, say, a 48-year-old molesting a 12-year-old, but the reactions of Bricker and Dead Badger seem to show that they do not see any difference. Heck, people can get married at 13 in some states.
Second, the 18-year-old in question is mentally handicapped, so we have diminished capacity as an extenuating circumstance. From the sketchy info in the news article, it does not sound like this guy is a sexual prdator, but a horny teen with no understanding of the concept of statutory rape.
Third, I appreciate Homebrew’s passion, but not everyone who disagrees with him is a bigot or a self-hating homosexual, so if he could dial it down a notch, I’d be grateful. If you keep hurlign the b-bomb indiscriminately, people will eventually tune you out, and I’d hate to see your forceful, capable voice diminished by your anger.
I note with no small amusement, gobear, whom you quote in your signature. He was banned. Mockingbird has quit posting here. I don’t recall the last time I saw lissener post in the Pit. Somebody has to take up the mantle. MLK Jr. needed Stokely Carmichael. The radicals push the envelope to make the moderates seem more reasonable despite being revolutionary themselves.
That being said and while I respect you and your opinion, I must disagree that I’ve used the term bigot indiscriminately. If people equate homosexuality with deviance or being “unnatural”, if people support biggoted laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation, if people use derogatory language, if people call gay folk unfit to be a parents, if people say gay men can’t be trusted to be a Big Brother or Scout Leader; then what are they if not bigots?
Yeah, Hamlet, I do need more. Your cite specifically talks about sexual abuse that was coersive.
We’re talking here about teens willingly giving and receiving blow jobs. Adult predators, charges of NAMBLA membership and whatnot are Red Herrings and ludicrous. I’d demand an apology except that I don’t respect the poster enough to care.
Gawd agatha - I dunno, let’s start out with the whole question of consent - being young and vulnerable, is verbal consent to be trusted? It is easy to envisage a situation whereby a child is convinced by an elder to go along with something they are unsure about. How about children becoming sexually active before they are aware of the real risks of sex, and without the maturity to protect themselves properly? How about those risks themselves; a child having sex with an older person who is already sexually active and may have any number of STDs. I could go on, but this is all common sense, isn’t it? I mean, why do you think age of consent laws exist? What’s special about this case that means it’s okay for a developmentally disabled 14-year-old to give consent? You’re saying no-one is showing judgement or discernment, and clearly believe that were such things applied here, people would be less concerned, but no-one seems to have advanced much more of an argument than “it’s just a hummer”.
You must have missed the bit where I supported the extension of KSA 21-3522 to all permutations of consenual sex, so feel free to retract this any time you like. My personal preference would be some sort of sliding-scale guidelines when it came to sentencing, as I dislike the somewhat arbitrary 4-year limit to KSA 21-3552. Regardless, I have simply been arguing that Limon’s actions are far from the fine-and-dandy innocent blowjob that Homebrew seems to think they were. I didn’t expect that this would be quite so controversial. There’s an enormous difference in maturity between an 18-year-old and a 14-year-old, and I simply don’t think it is right for people of these ages to be having sex. This does not mean that it won’t happen, or that 18 years isn’t a ludicrous sentence for such an act, but Homebrew would seem to have me believe that we should just sit back and relax, confident that our 14-year-olds could never be taken advantage of by older acquaintances.
The article gives no indication whatsoever of his conceptual level. You have also missed the fact that the other teen is also developmentally disabled.
Believe it or not, this was all I was trying to say.
Bullshit, circular logic.
When do human beings, on average, develop a sex drive? It just springs up ex nihilo on their sixteenth birthday? On their eighteenth, even? Certain elements in your society feel that there is a moral imperative to suppress your sexuality until after you’re married, or at least until you’re an adult. That’s all well and good, but it’s insane to codify into law. A period (lasting maybe four, six, or even eight years) of required abstinence after the development of sexual desires may make sense in the context of some religious upbringings, or even to many secular folks with a strict sense of propriety, but it has no place in criminal law. Not everyone considers sexual repression a prerequisite for virtue.
Get a little perspective. It looks an awful lot like old Xerxes ordering the the sea whipped for disobeying his order to reschedule the tides.
The idea that unrealistic and impractical sex laws somehow prevent real harm from coming to young people is, if you’ll excuse me, frankly stupid. We all agree that children need to be protected from the manipulation of sexual predators. Laws that address that problem specifically are much more suitable for that purpose than a ludicrously late age of consent.
You want “adverse effects?” How about those that come from forcing young people to conceal their sexual activity? Let’s face it, from (conservatively) thirteen on, people want to have sex. They’re gonig to. If you don’t acknowledge that, you’re going to get a lot of “It’ll be okay- just don’t come inside.”
The single most noticable effect of repressive age-of-consent laws in the United States::
I believe that it has everything to do with the unreasonable level of moralism that is allowed to dictate your public policy. We have MTV, too, so it’s not that. What we have that you don’t is a general acceptance of the plain fact that teenagers are sexual beings.
Apart from that adverse effect of your consent laws, (as well as the related health effects that you would expect,) I should think that you would see that having someone you love pushed through the criminal justice system for the “crime” of being a human being is something that falls under the heading of capital-A Adversity. Isn’t that kind of self-evident?
This is all quite apart from the outrageous disparity of having separate ages of consent for gay people, of course.
Just keep saying it: “Land of the Free.” The rest of us are long past laughing. It’s like a loop of Moe poking Larry and Curly in the eyes, over and over. You might instinctively laugh the first time, but when it keeps going on and on, it’s just too brutal.
Fuck. Next reel, please.
Where did you get that idea? I absolutely agree that there is a difference between the two, which is why I said I supported a Romeo & Juliet law, or a Romeo & Samson law. Right?
As I believe I’ve previously said, sexual maturity comes at different ages for different people. Of course any law is going to be somewhat arbitrary, (c.f. abortion limitations), however sometimes lines simply have to be drawn; it’s a question of balancing the need to protect against abuse with the need for children to develop at their own pace. I believe that children need protecting from sexual pressures until they are ready to make their own choice, and this involves age of consent laws. Are you against all such laws? Do you think it’s fine for adults to have sex with children, or “insane” to attempt to legislate against such a possibility?
Whatever you say. I’ve always felt that consent laws were pretty reasonable, and based on pragmatism, not morality. I’m more than willing to entertain actual arguments to the contrary, but so far I’ve just been insulted, and it’s getting fucking tiring to tell you the truth.
Could you give us an example? I’m curious as to how one might go about legislating against paedophilia without some reference to age.
Well, for starters I live in the UK not the US, and we have a consent age of 16, too. Your reference, while very nice, doesn’t seem to have anything to say about age of consent at all. As I read it, it seems to focus much more on reliance on teaching abstinence and marriage as a contributing factor in teen pregnancies, and here I thoroughly agree. We need to furnish our children with as much genuine education as possible, that they might make informed choices. Pretending that abstinence is the only answer is stupid and counter-productive. But this thread is not about teen pregnancies, nor is it really about young teens having sex with young teens. I am not wildly concerned about two mature 15-year-olds falling into bed as long as they know about and use protection; I am concerned about older people taking advantage of young teens. Clearly there is no point whatsoever in prosecuting the two 15-year-olds, but a 42-year-old groping the same kids needs to be dealt with. How one goes about disambiguating the two circumstances if not by age escapes me.
I quite agree, this is outrageous, and equalising the consent ages is one of the better things Labour has achieved since 97, IMO.
Since I’m getting absolutely sick and fucking tired of having opinions ascribed to me which I don’t remotely hold, I would like to take the opportunity to make the following clear, in no particular order:
[ul][li] The decision detailed in the OP is repugnant. Discrimination of this nature belongs in the past.[/li][li] I support Romeo-and-Juliet style legislation, and preferably something with more room for interpretation.[/li][li] Teaching abstinence as the sole method of birth prevention/STD protection is stupid. Education is everything.[/li][li] Defence of marriage arguments piss me off.[/ul][/li]I’m sure this will make no difference whatsoever (and is by no means exhaustive). I await with bated breath news of my latest opinion, with which I am sure someone will be kind enough to furnish me.
Yeah? Well, ner-ne-ner-ne-ner-ner, same to you with big brass knobs on infinity times and no returns of any kind, you shining playground wit. Excuse me if I harp on the facts briefly:
If you meant it for the generic “you” then you (specific) should not have started the paragraph with a “you” that was clearly intended for me alone. It makes the rest of your paragraph look like the same “you” is intended, and the casual reader winds up thinking I’m guilty of all that crap you’re spouting. I take it, in your roundabout and oh-so-charming way, you’ve implicitly retracted the assertion?
Parenthetically, my willingness for gays in general to be Scout Leaders is going to be dictated by some hard evidence as to whether on a per capita basis they represent a greater kiddy-diddling threat than straights, for a start. It will shock you to learn this, but I have no preconceptions either way.
OTOH, someone who has real difficulty seeing a problem with an older male repeatedly hitting on a succession of under-age males is another matter. Nothing like as big an issue as the actual older male involved, admittedly, but that’s not enough comfort for me, for a start. Buh-bye.
Don’t sweat it. That’s absolutely standard operating procedure. :rolleyes:
I do apoligize, DB- I was reacting to the quoted text entirely out of context. It’s an attitude that drives me up the wall, and verily my knee did jerk.
I don’t think our positions are too far removed from each other. I agree that people develop at different rates, and feel that the law should accomodate that as far as possible. As far as “children” having sex with “adults,” that depends on how you define your terms. When I was a young teenager, older girls were much more attractive to me. I was sexually active from 13 on, and mostly with women who were legal adults. I would have hated to see any harm come to the women I associated with in the year before I became “legal.” I knew what I was about, and I know damn well it was consensual. As far as the potential for harm is concerned, I think that the situation was much less dangerous than if I spent time with people who were as green as I was. That it was much more rewarding is just a bonus.
I’m thinking of limitations on the concept of consent such as those in the Canadian Criminal Code, which make it clear that consent cannot be obtained by force or coercion, or specifically if “the accused induces the complainant to engage in the activity by abusing a position of trust, power, or authority.”
No need to. The only thing that I object to is an age of consent that comes substantially after the age that most people will naturally be inclined seek out sexual partners. We’ve had cases (even in Canada) where thirteen-year-olds were both charged with rape for having enthusiastic sex with each other. That’s just wrong.
On preview, I’m not sure that my apology was strong enough, or rather I’m sure that it’s not. This is a bit rushed, since I’ve been procrastinating on preparing for company coming by. I really do regret not considering everything you’d posted before reacting to that one sentence.