Yes. Rape is worse than murder, and definitely worse than unintentional killing…
I’m labeling the jump from hypothetical to actual as bait-and-switch. A non-bait-and-switchy way would have been be to ask me what I felt the penalty for “forcible rape” should be.
Anyway, there is just rape. Emphasizing adjectives like “forcible” or “stranger” or “real” or “date” always has a whiff of smokescreen about it. Rape is rape. An 18 yo raping a 13 yo, a knife-wielding person raping a 32 y.o. They’re both rape, and deserve the same penalty.
Thanks. I’ll be sure to have you vet my opinions before posting from now on.
Point taken, and I will apologize for my poor wording on this one. I meant to contrast statutory from non statutory rape. The “forcible” wording was insensitive and stupid on my part.
I suspect that historically, that was exactly the point. You didn’t want the girl to be ruined. She needed to be kept intact so she could be properly married off.
That was partly about wanting children to be raised within marriage, and partly about men’s ownership rights over women. You wouldn’t want the girl’s hormones to persuade her to give her virginity to a boy that hadn’t first gotten permission from her father, her owner.
I already said I understand R&J-type laws, and am OK with them - when they’re reasonable. So I agree there, not all underage sex is rape. But reasonable, to me - that’s two 17 yos having sex, or a just-turned-18-last-month girl having sex with her 17-and-8-months-old boyfriend, etc.
Are you saying you think 18-on-13 is reasonable?
It already very much is. And we have a pretty much near-global rape culture. Coincidence? I think not.
No, I think there is benefit in prosecuting that and punishing according to the facts of the individual case. That seems reasonable and “reasonableness” is a cornerstone of the legal system.
What I think would be unreasonable would be to consider any sex between a 13 and an 18 year old to be worthy of greater punishment than the murder of a 13 year old by an 18 year old.
That seems to be the implication of your opinion and one that I remain fairly amazed by if it is indeed no more nuanced than your bald statement suggests.
I didn’t say murderers (not mjmartin’s manslaughterers) shouldn’t also get life. So I do not think they’re worthy of greater punishment. Just equal punishment. Because they’re both beyond the pale.
I also favour life in prison for a some other, nonviolent, crimes, BTW, such as financial-type crimes with a big negative social impact.
Never said it wasn’t, that would certainly be the category under which it was prosecuted but of course not all crimes under a given category are equal nor do I think they deserve equal punishment.
That is the part that I don’t understand, you think two, unequal crimes, are worthy of equal punishment? Rape is worse than murder but deserves no greater punishment?
That makes sense to me. Punishment maxes out somewhere. Whether you think the max is banishment, or life in prison, or execution, or being tortured to death, there’s some maximum punishment. Not every crime that gets the max is the same, and some might be worse than others.
There have been zero posts that have said an 18 to 13 sexual act is not rape or should not result in punishment. It’s your position that it should result in a punishment of life without the possibility of parole that is hard for me to understand. You seem unwilling to discuss it beyond saying that it is as bad a murder, but that you are open to R&J laws that you, personally, find reasonable.
I will just say that I think that it is an extreme position, and if implemented, would do little or nothing to reduce the number of statutory or non statutory rapes.
Claiming rape is worse than murder is a rather extreme position. Especially if statutory rape is considered under the general umbrella of rape. A lifetime sentence for a teenagers having consensual sex is extraordinarily disproportionate.
Not really. My sister and one of her friends ran away with a couple of adult men when they were 12, and they were trafficked for several months until she got picked up by the cops in Ohio ( we lived in North Carolina ). She wasn’t working as a prostitute, just having sex with multiple men because she was dependent on them for food and shelter. She was gone for about 4 months.
I don’t want to go into the details of the physical harm, but she almost died from a massive pelvic infection.
In 1972, this wasn’t considered a criminal matter. Everyone knew who the men were, but no one was ever arrested or charged - except for my sister and her friend who were hit with some juvenile charges. No one ever thought of her or treated her as a victim, though.
Things really were different back then, and not in a good way. Not to mention that my sister and her friend were both sexually abused as young children. I did not realize this until I was much older, but in retrospect the promiscuity as a pre-teen should’ve been a huge red flag. At some point after her death (she had a troubled life and died in her 40’s from injuries sustained in a house fire that was started while she was intoxicated), I put it all together, and one of her childhood friends later confirmed the early sexual abuse.
There was a lot that sucked about the seventies, and our societal failure to protect children was a big part of it.
Are these magical circumstances that make the rape not a rape?
I don’t give a single hoot for what you consider absurd or not. I was asked for my opinion, I gave it. Don’t feel the slightest need to defend it in this thread. Or any other one you might start, now, since it’s clear you just want to make things personal. Not prepared to play that dumb game with you again.
And since a lot of people think like you, rape culture persists.
No, clearly my fingers typed by themselves (