I don’t. I missed it entirely. If you quote something to that effect, I’ll apologize immediately.
You know perfectly well that that’s not what got you called rude. You’re equivocating like lissener here; let’s not go down that path. The last thing we need is another wounded genius insisting that the reason people don’t listen is because they’re unable to respond to the force of his logical arguments.
I think Cliffy was referring to my post:
As I said, I was trying to get Cliffy to clarify his point…I certainly wouldn’t want people to go around thinking he is a pederast if he isn’t one!
Cliffy, I certainly did not mean to imply that you were a pederast. If this is what it sounded like, then I sincerely apologize.
They can’t give consent legally, but that’s exactly what the group is trying to change.
As far as whether they can consent in some other sense, or whether they’re equipped emotionally, let me ask you this: Can you give consent? Are you equipped emotionally for sexual relationships? If you answered yes, suppose I don’t believe you - prove it. Convince me you’re mature enough to consent to sex. Now do you really think there’s no one under 18, 16, or your favorite state’s age of consent who fits the same criteria that you just used to prove your own maturity?
(Note: I hate to have to add a disclaimer here, but I just know someone’s going to make accusations if I don’t. I am not a member of NAMBLA nor do I know much about them; I am not a pedophile or pederast or whatever; I am not defending the organization; I don’t support their goal of legalizing sex with minors who honestly cannot consent, if indeed that is one of their goals. I am merely addressing the claim that lowering the age of consent is wrong because “they can’t consent”, because I believe minors are unfairly discriminated against and prevented from making their own decisions in many aspects of life, including this one.)
You didn’t imply any such thing, and it was ridiculous for Cliffy to say such a thing. You have nothing to apologize for.
Did you read Lute Skywatcher’s quote from the organization’s founder? I don’t think you’ll find anyone in this discussion who’s invested in the age of consent laws staying the same - but this group is not just a political advocacy group looking for a more rational approach to age of consent (as demonstrated by the fact that they don’t even have a proposal.) Arguing in the abstract about consent is a bit of a smokescreen, since this group isn’t particularly working to fix the issue - and since clearly a lot of their membership is pursuing very exploitive “relationships” with children far younger than any rational person would imagine are capable of consent.
Thank you. I certainly didn’t intend it.
Unfortunately, that isn’t true. They can consent to their 17-year-old child joining the military. They can send their children to schools where they’ll be taught that man walked with the dinosaurs and condoms don’t prevent STDs. They can refuse medical treatment that would be in the child’s best interests, or they can have treatment performed against his will.
Yes, and it’s a shame there are so many scumbags in the group. I think the group needs to be considered separately from its individual members, though. If we found out most of Microsoft’s employees were pedophiles, that wouldn’t justify blocking MS’s web site or firing employees for buying Xboxes.
They aren’t proposing a new age limit, but is it really true that they have no ideas for changing the law at all?
I’m sure there are a lot of NORML members whose drug use has been harmful to themselves and others, but that doesn’t invalidate the organization as a whole.
Well, Jebus’s arguments for that have yet to convince me. You may try if you wish, but I don’t see why - the fact is, as far as I can tell, that this organization is a large group of pedophiles that busy themselves trading pornography and assuring each other that their sexual impulses are okay. And those things are harmful. Whatever political front they put up is irrelevant to the fundamental actions of the organization.
Of course they do. At least according to everything I’ve heard (I’m not going to check their website, especially not while I’m at work) they favor getting rid of age of consent laws entirely. That’s certainly a new idea for changing the law. And that’s not a proposal that fits with the idea of a rational discussion of age of consent - it’s a proposal that fits with an agenda of being able to molest children freely. If anything, they’re probably making the real debate about how to define age of consent more difficult.
Again, when you’re talking about an organization whose members - most of them, anyway - want to have sex with prepubescent children, then they’re not going to contribute relevantly to any discussion about age of consent laws, because it’s clearly not in society’s interest to make sex with eight-year-olds legal.
The organization is not working to legalize child molestation. The fact that NAMBLA’s goal is to get rid of age of consent laws “invalidates” the organization all on its own.
Look, I know “children’s rights” is your pet crusade, but you’re moving from merely ridiculous to insane when you’re trying to persuade me that favoring the legalization of child molestation is a valid viewpoint.
So, you are saying that NAMBLA’s goal is to change the age of consent from 18 to 17?
Not sure if this is exactly harmful in any way
They don’t always.
I will give you this one. I am sure there have been cases where parents have been forced to give a child medical treatment against their religious beliefs, but I don’t have time right now to look up a cite.
Your example doesn't fit, because the employees being fired are **doing business ** with an organization that is full of pedophiles, not **a member or employee** of the organization itself. However, one would certainly be justified in not doing business with Microsoft directly, if their employees were pedophiles. And I think a case could be made, too, for firing an employee who does business with a company full of known pedophiles.That’s a poor example, because the sexual proclivities of Microsoft employees does not effect their ability to make an operating system or a gaming console. NAMBLA exsists specifically to address the concept of altering age of consent laws. As such, the fact that a significant number, if not outright majority, of members want to have sex with extremely young children is absolutely a factor in considering the nature of the organization.
Plus it’s simply not possible - how titanically unlikely would it be for a large corporation to also be full of pedophiles? Isn’t it kind of obvious that NAMBLA might be? Jebus and 2001 keep trying to say we should regard the “organization” as some separate entity from its membership - when that’s what an organization fundamentally is; it’s not some sort of enormous coincidence that an organization dedicated to getting rid of age of consent laws would also happen to be full of pedophiles. Jebus and 2001 keep implying that it is - that it’s unfortunate and surprising that some of the group’s members do bad things. And that’s absolutely bizarre reasoning. You might as well act shocked when you find out the Catholic League opens their meetings with prayer.
I’m all for questioning assumptions and common wisdom, but when it turns into some sort of intellectualized refusal to accept the evidence just because it is the natural assumption, it makes for rather fruitless (but admittedly, entertainingly surreal) arguments.
Bullpuckey. Sarahfeena made a claim that two things were categorically different without supporting that statement at the time (although she has made her arguments more explicit in later postings). And whether you agree with me or not that that’s what she did, assuming the thing you’re trying to prove has been referred to (by greater men than me) as eating one’s own tail. I don’t think that’s rude, but you’re certainly entitled to your opinions.
In general, I don’t know what your problem with me is, but I think your blood pressure might go down a little if you didn’t spend so much time worrying about it. If someone has a problem with my rhetorical style, let them bitch to me about it; they don’t need you to be their knight in shining armor.
–Cliffy
I don’t actually have any idea who you are, but in the last couple days I’ve noticed you playing Logic Policeman a couple times, and in this instance you did so in a particularly unpleasant matter. If you think I’m following you around, that’s simply an article of your own paranoia. At any rate, I simply didn’t feel your condescending little version of the Socratic Method was particularly helpful in this thread - if you have an argument to make, do so; I, for one, don’t particularly like spectators who do nothing but offer up their commentary on exactly what’s wrong with what everyone else says, rather than actually making an argument and defending it. If we need somebody to do nothing but make patronizing suggestions about what’s wrong with everyone else’s argument without even subjecting their own views to examination, well, last I checked Liberal was still a member.
If you have a serious problem with something someone else says, fine. But sitting on the sidelines playing “spot the logical fallacy” is irritating, and it simply does not contribute anything to creating an enlightening discussion.
And your claim that she implied you were a “pederast” is simply fallacious.
TWEEEEEET!!!
This topic is heated enough without half the posters deciding to interpret the arguments, themselves, as personal attacks.
If you cannot defend your position without attributing motives to your opponents, then perhaps your argument is not as cogent as it needs to be.
If you cannot read others’ posts without taking personal offense at every inflection or nuance of their comments, then you may be too personally attached to the discussion to participate in an actual debate.
Stick to the topic and leave aside comments on the attitudes or behaviors of other posters.
**[ /Moderator Mode ] **
Should NAMBLA be treated different from other political groups? If by that you mean they should be placed in a steel cage and the door welded shut, then yes.
I suppose I’d have the unenviable task of parsing the difference between personal morality and a society of individual persons that must agree on a set of things that are absolutely taboo. And while I’m fending off the advance of the slippery-slopers, I’d explain that in the end, one simply has to determine where one stands on an issue and do whatever they feel is necessary to be heard.
I think that a good test would be to ask that person ‘Do you feel that gay people should be arrested?’ and then to ask ‘Do you feel that all adults who sleep with children should be arrested?’ You’ll immediately find some common ground.
Does anyone have any evidence that NAMBLA members are more likely to commit a sexual crime against children than a random person?
I am not talking about what common sense tells you, but solid statistical evidence.
Do you have any evidence they’re not? Because it seems to me that if you’re asking us to cast off our sense, you should be providing us reasons to do so.
Such data would be difficult to gather anyway; crime statistics are not kept on the basis of membership in organizations; further, I doubt most members are exactly open about it. A cynical person - though of course not yours truly - might wonder if you were deliberately demanding impossible evidence in order to claim victory when none could be found.
Again, this kind of denial of the obvious when there’s no reason to do so is irrational; it’s not a useful method of finding the truth. You’re essentially asking us to believe something because it’s absurd. Besides, earlier, weren’t you tacitly accepting this when you asked us to try to consider the organization and its members separately? Are you changing tacks because it’s been shown that organization meetings are known to play host to illegal activities, and thus the organization is not so innocent? Or are you just scrambling?
So I’m going to stick with my position until you give me a better reason not to.
I think common sense is more than enough. The percentage of people in the general populace who want to have sex with children is relatively low. The percentage of people in NAMBLA who want to have sex with children is, by definition, extremly high: that’s the entire and sole purpose of joining NAMBLA in the first place. When coupled with the aura of permissiveness encouraged in NAMBLA meetings (as shown by numerous cites in this thread) the idea that a member of NAMBLA is no more likely to molest a child than a random person off the street rises to the level of an extrordinary claim. That is to say, the onus is on you to provide “solid statistical evidence” that NAMBLA members are not more likely to molest, not on us to show that they aren’t.
Part of the problem outlined, here, is that there are multiple question presented with an apparent expectation of a single answer.
To address several of the issues mentioned:
The SDMB does not want live links to NAMBLA. However, this is based on practical considerations. There are people here who post from work and we do not want any poster endangering his or her job by clicking on a link from work without realizing the ramifications it may have with the employer’s net monitors. (We have heard all the arguments about it not being our responsibility and we have decided to act in a protective manner, anyway. We will not discuss that aspect in this thread.)
The question of “how should we treat NAMBLA members” has two separate situations:
In the first, I think the government has no business interfering with any political group. However well-intentioned the rationale, the same rationale has been used in the past to suppress people who associated with gasp Communists or who advocated changes to drug laws. Those intrusions by government (using the same excuses about “threats” to society) were wrong and evil and I will not support them against any group attempting to act through the political process. (Realistically, NAMBLA has no hope of ever actually getting any open member elected or influencing any legislation. If they wish to have a dead-end “politiacl party,” then they are welcome to it.)
In the second, each person has to determine his or her own tolerance for things that seem wrong. I, personally, would not fire a person simply for being a member of NAMBLA, but I would make very sure that that person was never permitted to get near any unattended children at a company picnic, that that person avoided any NAMBLA (or similar) links on company computers, and I would probably be extraordinarily suspicious of any activity that seemed remotely connected to contact with children–to the point of investigating any such apparent activity.