Should NAMBLA be treated different from other political groups

Great Debates
101

Whatever political front they put up is irrelevant to the actions of the members as individuals. If they’re in fact trading pornography, go ahead and investigate them. But unless the organization is facilitating it somehow, don’t blame the organization.

I disagree. Any rational discussion of the age of consent has to start with whether or not it even makes sense to divide people into “consenting” and “nonconsenting” based solely on age! I’m in favor of getting rid of the age of consent law–and every other legal age restriction–but my “agenda” has nothing to do with molesting children.

Good, because age of consent is a sham. People do not suddenly go from “immature” on Monday to “mature” on Tuesday, and it’s a mistake to base the law on the fiction that they do.

What the members as individuals want is separate from what the organization as a whole actually does.

Again, this is a simplistic view of the law. Arguing against the concept of “age of consent” is no less valid than arguing against, say, sales tax. We need to divide the people who can consent from the people who can’t consent, just like the government needs to collect money, but age restrictions and sales tax aren’t the only ways to achieve those goals.

Nonsense. It’s no surprise when a group dedicated to legalize XYZ attracts people who are interested in XYZ. But you seem to be arguing that if a group is filled with nasty people, the organization and its mission are automatically invalid.

Not at all, but thanks just the same - I needed a little more straw in my diet. (BTW, in most states, changing the age of consent to 17 would be an increase.)

Correct. They do, however, work most of the time, and lying to children about it is harmful any way you slice it. The fact remains that parents are allowed to make choices on behalf of their children that result in harm - allowing them to decide when their children are mature enough to have sex would just be one more choice.

Look, wouldn’t you expect an organization devoted to making this (or any) activity legal to attract the people who want to take part in that activity? Do you think NORML’s membership rolls aren’t full of pot smokers, some of whose drug use has caused problems for their friends and family? It’s a shame that these people exist, but the political goal of the organization can stand or fall on its own merits, regardless of what the members do in their own time. The fact that someone’s a pedophile doesn’t automatically invalidate everything he touches.

102

Except that the very existence of the organization has demonstrably facilitated it by providing a network where people can more easily meet with the purpose of committing illegal acts. Neither you nor Jebus has yet provided an argument for why the organization should not be held to account for this.

Ahh, but no. Any rational discussion must, of course, begin with a thorough analysis of the effects of the current system; those proposing to change it have the responsibility to offer a plan and then reasoning to support it. That’s the nature of debate.

In an issue like this, where the consequences of making the wrong decision - i.e. legalizing child molestation - are particularly severe, any changes to the current situation clearly face a very heavy burden of proof.

Except that by making the debate more difficult, NAMBLA is preventing the problem from being solved - and I agree that it’s a problem that two teenagers of nearly the same age having a consensual sexual relationship can be punished. Particularly bizarre is the fact that in many states, the laws are so byzantine that such a relationship may go from legal on Monday to illegal on Tuesday!

For whatever part NAMBLA has played in furthering the current hysteria in regards to child molestation, they have made rational discussion of age of consent laws more difficult. You and I agree would agree that this is a problem.

There must be some sort of reasoning behind this truly bizarre conclusion, but neither you nor Jebus has seen fit to share it.

(Bolding mine.) You have not yet demonstrated that this is the case. No other legal mechanism to prevent child molestation springs to my mind.

Precisely! Especially when those nasty people are working to change a law that prevents them from hurting others.

Ahh, but I don’t view smoking pot as inherently wrong; my viewpoint is not unusual on this issue (and it’s peripheral, so I feel little need to elaborate on that). Whereas I do view molesting children as inherently wrong. So if NORML is full of people who smoke pot and want it to be legal, I see no problem with their advocacy work. Whereas if NAMBLA is filled with people molesting children and want it to be legal, I have a major problem with them advocating that view.

This pretense that NAMBLA’s work to legalize child molestation should be viewed neutrally is nonsensical; they’re working to legalize something deeply wrong by anyone else’s standards. Comparing child molesters to those who commit victimless crimes is problematic in the extreme, since the immorality of hurting other people for your own pleasure is something indisputable.

103

I think children should have as much of a right to have sex with people as anyone else. Arguments that it damages them are ludicrous. KIDS HAVE SEX DRIVES. HOLY SHIT! When did you guys start jacking off? When would you guys have started jacking off had you know about it sooner? Arguments that kids cannot give consent are ludicrous too. Kids can want stuff. Kids can want to have sex. Ergo, kids can consent to have sex with someone, because they want to.

All your arguments have precisely three sources: squemishness, social indocrination, and forgetting what it was like to be a child.

Mind you, I’m neither gay nor even old enough to be a pedophile. But had there been a NAWBLA when I was growing up, I would’ve joined in a heart-beat.

well put.

No, molestation is doing something to someone who is unwilling. Children can be as unwilling as adults, and no law should be repealled against molestation or rape.

I just disagree that your assertion that anyone young is automatically unwilling. it’s ludicrous.

Are they really for sex with prebuscent children? That would automatically mean the child has no sex drive, and i agree that arguing for that doesn’t make any sense. However, I think they’re arguing to be able to have sex with boys who want to have sex with them, and feelings such as those may start at around the age of 11 (at least that’s when I began to develop sexual desires).

Sex with prebuscent children is wrong (or at least you can be sure they’re not getting anything out of it). Sex with pubescent children… when I was a kid, I sure didn’t want to have laws forbidding people from having sex with me. What do you think my fantasies were about?

NAWBLA! NAWBLA!

104

er… for anyone skimming… please note the W

105

That’s “facilitating”? I don’t think you’d hold NORML to the same standard, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to hold NAMBLA to it either. By that logic, rehab centers facilitate illegal drug use, because if you want to find out where to get drugs, it’s hard to find a better place than a room full of junkies.

Is it even possible to form a group advocating these legal changes (or hell, any other relaxation of laws) that doesn’t “provide a network where people can more easily meet with the purpose of committing illegal acts”? I don’t see how it could be done in this case, and IMO allowing political advocacy has got to take precedence over any worries about letting perverts meet other perverts.

I don’t see how they have made the debate more difficult. It seems to me that if anyone is doing so, it’s the people in threads like this one who make vile accusations against anyone who doesn’t come down hard against such groups.

Nitpick: Merriam-Webster defines byzantine as “of, relating to, or characterized by a devious and usually surreptitious manner of operation” or “intricately involved”. The problem with laws like that one is not that they’re too sneaky or complicated, but that they’re too simplistic. They treat people as numbers instead of individuals.

Sure. I don’t think it’s fair to blame them and ignore the other side of the hysteria problem, though.

Doesn’t seem very bizarre to me. To use a tired cliche, I can love America without loving the people who run it. Why shouldn’t I consider the goals and official acts of an organization separate from the unofficial activities of its members?

I’ve had this discussion many times and I don’t especially wish to repeat the whole thing again.

Let me just say that it seems patently obvious to me that age is being used as a proxy for some quality, call it “maturity”, and the law is set up to measure someone’s age and guess their maturity based on that, much like a carnival barker might guess someone’s weight based on his height and build. But we don’t go to the carnival every time we want to check our weight, because we know what weight is and we can use a scale to directly measure it. We must decide what we mean by “maturity”, i.e. how we know whether a person is mature or not, and develop guidelines to measure individuals as individuals. I have thought about what it means to give informed consent to sex and what those guidelines might be, and I’ve made proposals in several threads. None of the pro-AOC folks seem willing to put forth the same effort. If you really want to talk about alternatives, you can start by doing that - but preferably in a new thread.

The law prevents a number of things, some of which are harmful and some of which are not, but I’ve seen no proposal that would actually legalize the harmful ones.

Again, the law prevents a number of things. Webster defines “molest” in this context as “to force physical and usually sexual contact on”. If there is consent, there is no forcing and thus no molestation. It seems to me that NAMBLA wants to bring the law’s definition of consent in line with their own. Now, their definition may be screwed up, but the law’s definition is screwed up too, and just because the group is pushing an extreme view doesn’t mean they’re illegitimate.

106

On the contrary. Molestation does not require the component of forcible rape. A child may be quite willing to engage in behavior or acts that are, ultimately, harmful to the child, but lack the understanding to realize the potential harm.

I am acquainted with a boy who was introduced by his father into sexual activity at a very young age and, at least initially, was a very willing participant. As time went by, he became increasingly uncomfortable with the situation before he was rescued and it messed up his head quite a bit. However, those events were not imposed “against his will” from the perspective that he never protested them at the time.

Your definition seems to be an arbitrary distinction without a difference.

Adult (either sex) vs child (either sex) is evil, regardless of the hormonal fantasies of teenagers. Making an attempt to make NAMBLA “more” evil by emphasizing its homosexual component gets no traction with me.

107

We currently have a system in which we can, with no more effort than to check a birth certificate, ensure that the overwhelming number of people permitted to an action will have displayed sufficient maturity to engage in an activity with relative safety. We even have procedures in place to defer or deny the recognition of people who will not have attained actual maturity by that age–a procdure that requires the involvement of professional evaluations and specific actions by the courts.

While I have seen various methods proposed to disengage the legal connection between presumed maturity and birth date, none seem to be worth the effort. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of persons would continue to reach “maturity” at approximately the age they do now, but we would have to impose a significant bureaucracy to perform and enforce the evaluations for the minimal return of permitting one or two kids to be “adult” one to three years sooner (and perhaps denying some similarly small number of persons the “adult” label for an additional one or two years). That appears to be a rather high cost to society to let a few kids get laid earlier.

108

Of course. If some key understanding of the situation is missing, there is no informed consent… but be careful with that word “ultimately”. A lot of people willingly get into relationships that, in the end, turn out to be bad for them, but we don’t call that molestation.

109

What is bizarre about this concept? I know several members of NORML who have never toked up in thier lives and who support NORML simply because they find the drug laws to be an irrational imposition of government on the citizenry.

Now, I would be surprised to discover that there were anywhere near as many members of NAMBLA who were uninterested in pedophilia or hebephilia as there are members of NORML who were uninterested in using any currently proscribed narcotics. (I would, frankly, be astonished to discover that any member of NAMBLA was personally uninterested in sex with kids.)

However, you have put forth the notion that it is impossible for a person to support an organization without desiring to engage in the activities championed by that organization and have even labeled that assertion “bizarre,” yet you have provided no reason for us to accept your position.

Separate question: Do you believe that the government has any right to suppress, as a political organization, a group that wishes to campaign for changes to laws when such changes would be unpopular (or even icky or evil)?

110

That’s the claim, at least, but where is the evidence? How do we know that the overwhelming number of 16-year-olds (or various other ages in various states) have displayed sufficient maturity to have sex safely, and 15-year-olds haven’t?

If there is any real evidence to justify these age restrictions, (1) where has it been hiding? (2) Why is there still so much inconsistency in the age cutoffs? Surely the teenagers here in Washington aren’t two years more mature on average than Californians. Why, it’s almost as if the ages are based on tradition and gut feelings rather than measurable fact.

And yet we have no procedures to advance the recognition of people who have achieved it before that age. Even parents, who normally make decisions on behalf of their children when the children can’t make them on their own, can’t decide when their children are mature enough to have sex legally.

Easy for you to say - the laws don’t apply to you anymore.

111

We call it molestation (or some synonym thereof) if the person was not capable of making an informed choice.

Trying to make molestation OK by redefining the terms as long as it was not done under threat of force invokes my bullshit meter in a big way.

112

I said the same thing at 12, 14, and 16. I was surrounded by 12, 14, and 16-year olds.

113

Indeed. I’m just saying you don’t need to be able to predict how your choice will have affected you several years down the road in order to make an informed choice. A choice is informed if you know what you’re choosing to do and what you can commonly expect to happen as a result.

114

You are missing the point of WHY children cannot give consent. It is not because they might not be willing, because they may indeed be. It is because they do not understand the possible consequences of engaging in sex acts. They do not understand all of the emotional undertones, they don’t understand the physiology, they may not understand something as basic as “this is how you can get deadly diseases and make babies.” It is dangerous for anyone to be involved in sexual relationships if they are not emotionally and intellectually capable of understanding these things. As adults, part of our role is to protect children from things that are dangerous.

115

So, if a minor does understand those things, they can give consent, right? How hard can it be to determine whether someone understands STDs and pregnancy, anyway?

Maybe I’m just a quick learner, but I certainly knew all that before I could give legal consent (except perhaps the emotional undertones bit, which frankly IMO is irrelevant to giving informed consent, as it falls into the category of “predicting how your choice will have affected you several years down the road”). It simply isn’t that difficult. Don’t schools in your area have health classes?

116

OK…does a 6 year old understand any of this? Maybe a 12 year old understands it on a purely “health class” kind of level. However, everyone knows that young people have very little grasp of abstract ideas…how many times have you heard it said that teenagers have a sense of invincibility (“that would never happen to me”)? How much understanding will they REALLY have about what the likelihoods are of the various consequences, and how extremely dilligent one must be in protecting oneself against them?

As far as the emotional aspects…children relate to adults on a very, very different level than 2 adults relate to each other. They are constantly seeking approval, for one thing. How will this affect the likelihood of an adult being able to take advantage of a child in this situation? What if the adult says to the child “we are doing this because I really really love you and will take care of you and make sure nothing bad will happen to you,” and this is a complete and utter lie. Does the child realize that adults sometimes lie to get what they want?

117

Yes, because how horrible it would be for someone to make the mistake and think you were TEH GAY!!!

:rolleyes:

Either way-what’s stopping you from starting one now?

118

But that is the topic at hand, no? Whether sexual activity will mess up a child even if they’re willing. Considering the evidence regarding pornography that it clearly does not, you’ll have to present an argument why sexual activity with another is different than sexual activity solo with the tv.

What messed up his head was people like you telling him what a horrible thing was happening to him. Hypothetically, do you agree that if you tell a child that something that is happening is bad (say, masturbation, or even something non-sexual and completely benign), he’ll believe you? and if you tell him to be profoundly ashamed, you’ll eventually be able to convince him to be? Better yet, if it’s not just one person but many. (Provided they have authority in his eyes in the first place, of course.) THAT is what would mess up his head. People like you are always saying kids are impressionable. Exactly!

Good. My point wasn’t to emphasize the homosexual component. My point was to be able to talk from my own experience.

“emotional undertones.” what does that mean, honestly? I think when people say that, they really refer to the kid getting infatuated and then heartbroken. I don’t understand there to be any other emotions naturally associated with sex. Please think hard about this one. So you think kids shouldn’t be allowed to have sex (and people be jailed because of it) because they’ll get heartbroken and really upset afterwards? WTF happened to “it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” The whole “emotions” ruse is usually a smokescreen and people don’t think deeply enough what it means.
Regarding diseases and babies… that’s why you educate them to do things properly. I again don’t understand why we are putting people in jail in order to prevent disease and babies among teens. Besides, adults having sex with kids can be expected to be responsible about such things, more so than kids having sex with each other. Please explain the STD-babies-JAIL connection in detail.

Anyone have any other arguments besides heartbreak and stds? Moreover, arguments which are not undermined by the research that has been done regarding pornography and masturbation.

119

Sorry, kid, but no. It don’t work that way. The harmful effects of child molestation are extremely well documented; it’s not everyone else on this board’s responsibility to be your remedial psychology teacher. I’m sorry you’re apparently so ignorant of so many things, but it’s not everyone else’s problem and having you around dragging down debate with this kind of thing is not useful.

At any rate, let me remind you once again that, under the rules of debate, the person making an assertion has to provide evidence for it. If you think that child molestation isn’t harmful, it’s up to you to prove it.

So children are so impressionable that they can be psychologically damaged merely by being told, “Gosh, Dennis, it sure was bad for Mr. Wilson next door to screw you up the ass!” But they’re not so impressionable as to be easily talked into doing things they don’t want to do.

Man, your argument is weak, dude.

Then I recommend you spend less time around here and more trying to lose your virginity. Seriously, dude, WTF?

No one thinks that; that’s a ridiculous and stupid strawman. People shouldn’t have sex with children because it his harmful to them. I’m sorry if you don’t know anything about the subject, but it’s not everyone else’s responsibility to teach you something so simple, any more than it’s our responsibility to try to teach you long division over a message board if you start yelling about how you think it’s all a meaningless scam.

You’re off in your own little world, aren’t you?

Yes, if there’s one thing child molesters are known for, it’s their careful attention to children’s safety and health. :rolleyes:

There’s something you don’t seem to understand, Alex, and that’s the fact that if you don’t understand something, it doesn’t mean no one does. The fact that you are so woefully uneducated about this subject (at least) and attempting to argue it doesn’t prove anything besides that you’re woefully uneducated. There’s lots of research out there on the effects of child sexual abuse.

Besides, this is an attempt to hijack the discussion into something else. Why don’t you start your own thread about whether child molestation is actually harmful? That’s not really what the topic of discussion was around here, and stopping this thread so we can play remedial educator is really a stupid thing to do. You could be relieved of some of your ignorance elsewhere, and the rest of us could continue the discussion that was already happening.

120

Probably not. Therefore, they would not be able to give informed consent.

Right, just like everyone knows that old people smell and drive too slowly. Should we base the law on that stereotype too?

Unless you can come up with some kind of metric–you know, based on evidence, rather than your own gut feelings–for deciding whether or not someone “REALLY” understands, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, can you or I or anyone else here prove that we “REALLY” understand the likelihood of catching an STD or getting pregnant?

If the consent is based on deception, it isn’t informed consent, now is it?

Actually, there is evidence that willing sexual encounters don’t lead to psychological harm. The studies by Rind et al. have been cited in past threads.