You are correct. I was wrong. He served 3 months and had three years’ probation.
No, I’d want it changed to 50 years (or life without parole, for personal preference) just as a principle.
Or else rape culture never ends.
Fuck no.
Next question?
Archie Simonson got himself recalled back in 1977 in Madison, Wisconsin for victim blaming a 15 year old rape victim, who got raped in high school by another high school student and giving the rapist a light sentence.
Coming from a background where the Judiciary stood its ground against a colonial governments wishes and later those of dictators, I find the concept of legally permitted consequences for ordinary and proper judicial actions to be terrifying.
There is literally nothing in the Brock Turner case which indicated the judge acted improperly. Yet he has had to suffer consequences, professional and social.
That is going to have far bigger ramifications for a society than whether some dude gets to coach tennis players.
I didn’t really like the recall election, and I don’t like this either. Tell me when it starts happening to reactionary judges who’ve never seen a maximum sentence they didn’t like, and maybe I’ll change my mind. Until then, it sounds like a fine way for the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world to keep winning that prize.
Matthew 7:1
This is pretty much how I feel. Social consequences are part of the toolset society can use to improve and become more just. People who uphold or otherwise aid or tolerate terrible things, even if it’s technically “legal”, might be criticized and even lose friends and social privileges for it. There are consequences to every decision.
What else would you blithely apply a statement like “there are consequences to every decision” to?
Underage drinking? Teenage pregnancy? Opioid use? Undocumented immigrants who brought their children to America and now face possible separation?
Do you so readily dismiss the second and third order effects of taking a “choices have consequences” approach to all those issues?
I don’t think it’s useful to try and compare unavoidable physiological & biological consequences with those created and caused solely by human will.
Honestly, the thread kind of ended here. I find this argument unassailable.
Judge Persky is not being held accountable for the specific of his ruling as a judge, he’s being held accountable for public comments he made in the course of making a ruling. Comments that, it is indisputably true, suggest a cavalier and backwards attitude towards sexual assault, a statistically significant threat for teenage girls. Why should the parents ignore that?
But this isn’t a case of revenge; that is a wild mischaracterization of this event. This is parents deciding they do not want a man coaching their teenage daughters, and the reason they don’t want him coaching their teenage daughters is that he made comments strongly indicating he doesn’t take rape seriously. They are acting in their capacity to ensure their daughters are being supervised by adults of decent character, whose attitudes are appropriate for close contact with teenage girls. I have teenage girls and I would absolutely not want them coached by Persky.
It’s great to change unjust law, but with due respect, what the hell does that have to do with a parent’s IMMEDIATE concern about who’s coaching their kid?
How we respond to murderers, rapists, and other people who have done terrible things is just as much a matter of psychology and biology as anything else I listed. We are a social species.
I think it’s useful to examine how we can be blind to our own prejudices. Just consider this: the rich white kid has already gotten off. The outrage that got this judge recalled is part and parcel of the system that ensures people from marginalized backgrounds end up receiving stiffer penalties for similar crimes, up and including to being sentenced to death in disproportionate numbers.
Different sides, same coin.
Of course there are consequences to every decision, including those things you mentioned. I don’t see how that conflicts with anything I’ve said.
Got it. I say “there is an opioid crisis, people are dying, we should be outfitting police and EMTs with Naloxone.” And you say… what? “Hey man, choices have consequences.”
Or do you suddenly feel like we should evaluate the broader implications of such a policy?
I don’t think it is useful because the first three things you listed are going to happen no matter what people’s attitudes are, while the fourth only happens because of people’s attitudes, which can change.
Different sides, different coins.
in the cases of rape, you’d be absolutely spot on. How about just any old unwanted pregnancy though?
“Choices have consequences” is not the end-all final response to every single circumstance, IMO. It is in this one, though. IMO, of course. Negative social consequences for immoral uses of power are entirely appropriate, in my view.
I dislike outrage-based social consequences. People, all of us, are fickle. I would rather see a judge who makes bad rulings impeached or censured by an appellate court or a judicial review committee. I hate the idea of putting people into sensitive positions where they must make incredibly difficult decisions that virtually no one else has to make, and effectively making them the sin eaters for the rest of us.
I hate (the idea of) elected judges; I hate (the idea of) judicial recall elections; I hate social shaming as a crutch for social, legal, and economic reform. Personal opinion, based in part on how all those things have been historically used and twisted to create just the sort of NFBSKed up and racist society we have now.
No one has said that “choices have consequences” is the end all but what happens is that you then have people coming in saying that someone else needs to pick up the slack, EXCUSING the actions that caused said issue.
Liberals tend to do this a whole lot more than conservatives. If you go back to the personal responsibility (that you only posted in a few times to be snarky), you will see that the excusing of whatever behavior caused the problem only becomes an issue when you are expecting someone else to pay to get you out of that consequence …
In the end, if we all accepted the consequences of our actions, there would be a lot less consequences handed out because consequences also teach valuable lessons.
So sure the judge can in turn be judged by his action or inaction. Whether or not that makes good policy is completely up for discussion.
The trick to this question is, “to what extent”? Are we talking about one poor decision or a pattern of reckless leniency or harsh sentencing based on race? I support the latter, but the former is very problematic. It could just be one mistake in judgment. Everyone makes them. On the other hand, if there is a pattern of ridiculously lenient sentencing of white offenders as opposed to minorities, that is just cause for dismissal as far as I’m concerned.