Cite? Using your prior stance, I would argue that people who happen to be members of the Mafia (if such a group even exists) have been tied to crimes, not the group itself. /sarcasm
Given the choice between the house next to mine being sold to a member of the Mafia or a member of NAMBLA, I’d go with Vinnie any day.
See, that’s the kind of pseudo-intellectual stupidity that people begin to spout when they confuse people’s legal rights to be free from government interference with some imagined moral right to be free of the consequences of their actions. It’s the same with people who attempt to make arguments that posting on a message board is free speech and therefore their posts shouldn’t be subject to administrator approval (and as an administrator of a website sort of along those lines, I can tell you that people try to make that argument. Just because you have a Constitutional right to speak does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that you have some right not to face consequences from it. You can try to make an argument that they have a moral right to advocate a view that is, to anyone decent and normal, repugnant without facing others’ disapproval, but you have to make that argument if you want anyone else to believe it. It doesn’t logically follow that since an act is legal that everyone else doesn’t have the right to condemn it to whatever extent the law permits.
In the same way that I wouldn’t visit a relative who espoused racist views, I wouldn’t associate with anyone who I knew was a member of NAMBLA. If I was an employer, and my employees were at will, I would fire them for espousing racist views, and I would fire them for being members of NAMBLA. You can hold whatever views you want, and you can express them - but you only have the right to be free from government interference. You don’t have the right to be free of social opprobrium - with all the unpleasant consequences that entails - for engaging in immoral conduct.
You’re not sure what I’m asking? It’s a simple question: how is information on how to best break the law not advocating the breaking of said law?
Oh, really?
And how about this?
Do you really expect anyone to believe that’s an innocent poem which has nothing to do with an illegal activity?
Thanks, Excalibre…I was trying to formulate a similar post in my mind, but you expressed it very well. These NAMBLA people may have every right to not have their speech stifled by the government. However, society itself has not just the right but the obligation to condemn that which they find morally unacceptable.
Sorry; my syntax was unclear. I mean that he/you/we is discriminating between organizations we feel are benign and those we think malicious.
Really? You really want to make this claim? Because if you do you’re definitely on the wrong side of this argument – if morality is “totally subjective,” then that means that you cannot have any valid reason to decry another’s moral views, whether those support pedophillia, bigotry, the re-institution of slavery, foot-binding, or what have you. No, I choose to believe that there are moral absolutes that exist outside of religion or cultural convenience, and because I feel this way, I can say that slavery is wrong. If you really think morality is subjective, all you can say is “I don’t like slavery.” Well, I know of people who don’t like the idea of two men having sex, or the idea of me being married to a woman of a different race. If you believe morality is both subjective but nonetheless somehow valid, you’re saying that your approbriation of NAMBLA is the exact same animal is that of Bob Jones III’s approbriation of queers and race-mixing. And since you will agree with me, I think, that Jones has his head up his ass, I once again say that you’re going to have to give me more than “I don’t like it.”
–Cliffy
In the center ring tonight! Watch as the amazing Sarahfeena eats her own tail!
–Cliffy
:
So much for being “beyond the scope of being part of NAMBLA.”
Geez, you are a rude little thing, aren’t you? The point is that you can call the two things comparable, but they are not. In one case, you are taking certain rights away from children. In the other, you are opposing granting certain rights to adults. Not even close to an apples to apples situation.
And, in any case, I DO have the right to decide whether I think something is morally reprehensible or not. I happen to think that NAMBLA is morally reprehensible. This is MY freedom of speech, which I have just as much right to as they do. Likewise, the person who opposes gay rights legislation is just as much within THEIR rights to espouse this view, whether or not I agree with them or not. No one ever said they don’t have the right.
So what, children can’t consent to many thing, their parents can consent for them.
A parent cannot consent to something on behalf of a child that is clearly harmful to the child.
He’s like that. He seems to think he’s clever.
I fail to see the relevance. Unless you’re saying parents should have the right to consent to sex on their children’s behalf.
Yeah? Prove it. If morality is objective, there’s some way of showing, beyond argument, that something is moral or immoral. You feel slavery was wrong. Jefferson Davis disagreed. Prove that you are right, and he was wrong. If you can do that, it’s a great pity you weren’t born two hundred years earlier: you might have been able to avert a war.
The fact is, morality is entirely subjective. It is, almost by definition, a point of view. However, just because something is subjective, does not mean one cannot argue effectively for or against it. As evidence, go poke around in Cafe Society for a while. Virtually every thread there is about something subjective, and there’s a lot more content than simply, “I liked this movie!”
Generally speaking, though, if you want to argue against a particular policy or attitude, you’re going to make a lot more headway arguing with facts and numbers, and not morality. Most people are not going to change their morality through debate, particularly if that morality is religiously derived. You want to convince someone not to oppose gay rights, you’re going to make more headway arguing it on the ground of religious freedom than you will with arguing that God really doesn’t have a problem with gays.
Both those snipets are inarguably advocating how best to get away with being a pedophile and in no way are addressing the supposed purpose of NAMBLA as stated by Jebus. I’d love to hear them explained away. Actually, no. No, I wouldn’t.
You missed this line:
The first snipet in telling the letter writer to get to know the law so he can be sure not to break it.
The second is poem that expresses the person’s feelings about the current state of the law.
You missed the fact that the minister was arrested as a direct result of being at a NAMBLA meeting. If he weren’t there, he wouldn’t have been arrested. Simple as that.
No comment on those Bulletin excerpts?
This wasn’t there when I posted:
Suuure it is. :dubious:
And that’s all? :dubious: :dubious:
Tell us, Jeebus, by any chance are you a member of NAMBLA?
He was arrested for distributing child pornography. He was not arrested for being at a NAMBLA meeting. The article only says that the FBI agent met him at a NAMBLA meeting. There is nothing is the article that even says any illegal activity occurred at the NAMBLA meeting.