Then it follows that if if teenage sexuality were more normal and accepted, it would “work” better. A law outlawing teenage sexuality will only make the problems worse.
Unfortunately, the law does nothing at all to alleviate the consequences - it only attempts to discourage the act itself.
You can see how Prohibition and the War On Drugs have failed to discourage alcohol and drug use, even though there’s no innate human desire for alcohol and drugs as there is for sex… why assume that sexual prohibition would be any more successful?
Harm prevention is the best solution. If some drug users steal to support their habit or die from overdoses, it’s more fruitful to eliminate those negative effects (e.g. by controlling prices and purity) than to attempt to eliminate drug use itself. Likewise, if some teens who have sex end up diseased or pregnant, it will be more fruitful to focus on eliminating those negative effects than to try to eliminate teenage sex itself.
Well, I guess that makes it all better. Taken against your will and locked away from your friends, family, and everyone else you know? Sure. Stripped of your rights and privileges? Yup. But we’re supposed to believe it’s okay because the windows are made of glass instead of bars, and instead of making license plates, you get “therapy” for the condition of being a horny teenager.
The problem isn’t the conditions of their sentence. The problem is that they’re being sentenced at all.
The law they broke was a law against having sex. They only got arrested in this particular case because the parent walked in and called the cops, presumably because they refused to obey, but they were breaking the law regardless of whether she called the police. If they’d been caught by any other means (neighbors heard moaning and called the cops, etc.) they’d face the same charges.
Those laws have nothing to do with “willfully refusing to obey”. Even with parental permission, kids still can’t buy alcohol, get a driver’s license, or go to strip clubs. The cleark at the grocery store isn’t going to call your home to ask if it’s OK for your 14 year old daughter to buy cigarettes, he’s going to either kick her out or call the police.
You claim it was immature for the kids to assert their (nonexistent) rights to have sex - that’s debatable, to say the least, and your comparison between the maturity of claiming that right, and the maturity required to responsibly deal with sex, is ridiculous.
Then why has no one proposed other laws to “back up” parents trying to deal with kids who won’t do their homework, or eat their broccoli? Those are far more common than teenage sex, and a kid who fails school is far more likely to have problems than a kid who has safe sex.
Now there’s a classic: “It’s a parent thing. You wouldn’t understand!”
Perhaps you’ll understand why the wealthy need tax cuts when you have a million in the bank, or why the speed limit should be 100 MPH when you own a sports car, or why the EPA regulations are bad when you run a smoke-belching factory…
To stave off the predictable “but, but, sex isn’t broccoli” comment: If parents really need the ability to lock their kids up for disobeying house rules, then shouldn’t that apply no matter which rule they break?
Originally posted by ambushed
I didn’t see any truly rational reasons justified anywhere in this thread, but I suppose it is possible I missed them. What are they, again?
**Oh, I see you’re irony challenged. Sorry. The point I was ironically making is that I have carefully read the entire 8-page thread and nowhere did I see any “truly rational reasons [for your position] justified anywhere in this thread”. All I’ve seen is evasive and fundamentally irrational rationalizations for your own excessive parental anxiety and for threatening or pursuing horrible, permanently life-ruining psychological devastation for that vast majority of teenagers who won’t obey your irrational, iron-fisted retributive anti-love. But at least, unlike babe, you’re actually arguing! Thanks!
Originally posted by ambushed
If you’ll re-read my post, you’ll see that I was referring to our sexually repressed society far more than sexually repressed parents who are psychologically injured by being raised in a sexually repressed society and are damaging their own kids in turn without realizing it. Teenage sexuality – even at very young, barely post-pubertal ages – was the norm for millions of years, and thus remains the norm for human nature even today.
Oh, I see you’re a little bit reading-comprehensionally challenged. Sorry.
Let’s parse the first sentence of my response together, shall we? Part 1: I was referring to our sexually repressed society far more than sexually repressed parents. What this means is that my point was primarily about our deeply sexually repressed society, which is incredibly and harmfully prudish and sexuality-fearing due to the sickly pervasive emphasis of right-wing Christianity. Do you deny this?
Part 2: [these] sexually repressed parents… are psychologically injured by being raised in a sexually repressed society and are damaging their own kids in turn without realizing it. I was explaining that because we are all raised in this incredibly and harmfully prudish and sexuality-fearing society due to the sickly pervasive emphasis of right-wing Christianity, parents like you have already been injured by this sexually repressive society and, by foisting those psychological injuries on to your children, you are unknowingly perpetuating that damage!
Are you proud of yourself for such inanity?
You’ve been sold a bunch of rotten goods by ignorant yahoos, Shoes. The fact that teenage sexuality has been the norm for millions of years tells we more astute thinkers that:
(1) It’s an extremely stable, biologically and psychologically healthy (and thus fitness-enhancing) practice which would NOT have survived for millions of years if it were not ideally suited for human beings and human cultures. Don’t think you can get away with your prejudiced and massively uninformed attack on pre-moderns by calling them “primitive” as you have just because those cultures are not as sick and deeply injured as ours are! Go rent the film Koyaanisqatsi if you want to see more deeply into the sickness of our society.
(2) It’s STILL the sociobiological and psychological norm. A couple of millennia of Christianity-induced psycho-social injury and sickness from sexual repression like yours hasn’t changed that.
(3) Humanity has been genetically and sociobiologically “fine tuned” for teenage sexuality, and genetics and sociobiology cannot be denied. Your irrational and ultimately child-harming prejudices and fears can’t change our million year-old human nature! It is precisely your hate and anger against this undeniable fact of nature that prompts you irrationally terrified folks to deliver and support your lust for permanently devastating legal retribution for behavior that is perfectly natural and normal!
Just keep telling yourself that. I understand that’s the best way to con yourself into denying the plain truth.
Bullshit. First of all, it’s obvious that there’s no genuine love behind your repressive and anti-human goal of pursuing threats and legal persecution for normal behavior. If there were, the first thing you folks would do is call for a full repeal of all laws against teenage peer sexuality and tell the police that raising your kids is your own responsibility! This reliance and even fondness you folks have for using the force of the legal system to persecute and permanently injure those who cannot or choose not to obey you in all things is utterly demonstrative of your lust for power and your belief in ownership over your kids. It’s all right there in the Bible, which exhorts parents by force of law to KILL their disobedient children! You people are simply sad victims of your hidden need to exert total control over your kids in areas like sexuality that embarrass you or you fear to an irrational degree. The truth of this is shown in part by your fairly revealing words above: “More is expected of our citizens [read: teenagers] in the way of production, decorum etc etc.”
Originally posted by ambushed
Again, so does taking shop classes instead of Algebra II or consuming excessive carbohydrates without adequate exercise, thereby contributing to increased risk for diabetes and other life-long illnesses.
I guess I was wrong before, since you now appear to be somewhat more reading-comprehensionally challenged than I had originally thought.
Let’s again parse my response together:
(1)"… so does taking shop classes instead of Algebra II". What this means is that if a teenager takes shop classes INSTEAD of Algebra II, he or she are most definitely severely limiting their life and career potentials, thereby damaging their entire life. Yet for some reason you don’t seem to support dragging the cops into such far more life-damaging decisions!
(2)"… consuming excessive carbohydrates without adequate exercise, thereby contributing to increased risk for diabetes and other life-long illnesses.". Again, you folks quite self-contradictorily don’t support dragging the cops into those far more life-damaging decisions, either!
More stridently self-serving rubbish from the shoe man. I HAVE read the entire thread and done my own research, and yours and other’s posts “justifying” (rationalizing, actually) your lust for power over your teenage children by citing easily-avoided “consequences” are arbitrary and irrational. There is no justification whatsoever for your sentencing your teenagers whose only “crime” is enjoying consensual, sexual intimacy with one of their peers to permanent social and psychological destruction!
PLEASE stop your ridiculous evasion of my arguments by mindlessly asserting on no grounds whatsoever that I haven’t done my research!!
That’s not true. Some of you power-hungry anti-freedom campaigners expressed a willingness to modify the laws, it’s true. But what you and the others have NOT done is called for the full repeal of all laws against teenage peer sexuality and tell the police that raising your kids is your own responsibility until other people’s legitimate rights have been clearly infringed upon! And that’s utterly deplorable!
That’s just more of your evasionary wordplay and nitpicking. Whatever you call it, they are seriously punished and their freedom is denied them and they are placed in the immediate proximity of genuine criminals and are lovelessly warehoused by a hopelessly understaffed and underfunded bureaucracy which cannot possibly do the kids any good.
Another falsehood! Many – perhaps most – are sent to juvenile prison and are never entered into any “program” or half-way house. They’re seriously punished and their freedom is denied them and they are placed in the immediate proximity of genuine criminals and are lovelessly warehoused by a hopelessly understaffed and underfunded bureaucracy which cannot possibly do the kids any good.
There’s that reading comprehension problem again! Where did I claim otherwise? But the problem isn’t records, it’s permanent, life-ruining social and psychological damage resulting partly from their punishment and incarceration, partly from their exposure to genuine criminals, and partly from their extreme public humiliation and resultant devastated self-esteem and subsequent hatred of and distrust of society, their parents, and the law!
(1)Mid-forties, and (2) irrelevant, since I’m a member of our society and a citizen concerned about your willingness to call the cops on teenagers who engage in perfectly normal and natural behavior.
But either one is totally ridiculous, as my post makes clear. I know a substantial number of people who have engaged in teenage peer sexuality (and read of scores more in mainstream literature and non-fiction) who have not been harmed in any way, but I know no one who has done so that has been harmed in any way! Clearly, you have little or no such knowledge or experience either way so your opinion is nearly worthless. At best, your opinions are based on seeing ultra-hyped TV stories on the ever-loathsome local news.
I doubt thay. You certainly seemed to be trying to speak for many people when you wrote: And frequently sex too soon was a big part of what screwed up OUR lives.
At least you admit that your life is screwed up! I would say that disqualifies you from any sort of claims of objectivity on this subject.
Cite giving those numbers relative to the full teenage population, please?
The undeniable fact is that legally enforced sexual repression and fear- or hate-induced legal persecution causes FAR more emotional and psychological baggage and devastation later in life than does too-early teenage peer sexuality!
Evasionary and unjustified speculation. Both of these kids have already suffered significant psychological harm just by being legally persecuted, so it’s far too late for a “slap on the wrist”! Furthermore, I’ve already dismissed your evasionary wordplay regarding the word “prison” and your hints to the effect that you belive that incarceration in juvie hall or half-way houses is totally harmless. See above.
What silly rationalizations! I’ll wager you’re one of those who insist that Clinton was impeached because of “perjury” instead of the fundamental truth that he was impeached for getting a socially disapproved blow-job!
Thank for reinforcing my point. None of those things are perfectly natural, million-year-old teenage behaviors!
You get an “A” in speciousness, disingenuousness, and irrelevance. A trifecta! Well done.
First, please cite a reference for their side of the story. It seems quite likely to me that the kids got unexpectedly caught and quite understandably reacted defensively. The story as reported by the media sounds like Grammies’s self-justifying exaggerations and sanctimonious bullshit.
No one ever claimed that teenagers are mature, calm and sophisticated debaters, especially when they’re under pressure (Bob knows I don’t believe that!) We simply – and correctly – pointed out that teenage peer sexuality is perfectly normal and natural and that the effect of using the laws against this perfectly normal and natural behavior are FAR more devastating and life-destroying than anything the teens did (especially considering that they’ve already DONE it before being cruelly sent to juvie prison!)
Yep, like I said above, you lust for power over your teenage children who don’t love you enough to obey you in their intimate lives (because they didn’t receive enough love from you, probably, since you admit your life is screwed up) and you see no problems turning to threats of life-ruining legal persecution to enforce that lust for power!
And regarding your closing point, thanks to you for making unsubstantiated assertions and assumptions about our points without actually understanding any of them.
I just have one thing to say to your utterly ridiculous, unsustantiated claims.
Cite? You have so many “facts” in your lengthy, preachy post, but you have not backed one of them up with any real data.
Oh, and FTR? I’m not a man. I AM however the parent of two teens. Well, one is no longer a teen, she’s 23. You obviously missed my parental response when she became sexually active.
Also, I haven’t “campaigned” for any of this, neither have any of the other parents in this thread. But of course you ignored anything we said which you couldn’t use to attempt to sharpen your “wit”.
It’s obvious, based on your melodramatic speech that you’re merely a slightly older (chronologically) older version of nightime and that you have no hard facts to support your posturing.
PS, I have to laugh at your claim to have read the whole post. If you had, you’d already have KNOWN that I was a woman. As well as what the real opinions were of the other “pro” posters.
Talk about inability to read and comprehend! Um. Hint, it’s not the READER’S fault if the author can’t write a decent sentence.
And there are laws in place to assist parents with many cases (though of course not ALL) where kids willfully refuse to obey. To name just a few:
Underaged drinking, driving, entertainment (can’t be in a strip club, against the law, will get arrested), etc etc.
[quote]
Those laws have nothing to do with “willfully refusing to obey”. Even with parental permission, kids still can’t buy alcohol, get a driver’s license, or go to strip clubs. The cleark at the grocery store isn’t going to call your home to ask if it’s OK for your 14 year old daughter to buy cigarettes, he’s going to either kick her out or call the police.
[quote]
You’ve missed the point. LIKE the law against underage sex, those laws were legislated to protect teens against their own potentially foolish actions, as WELL as to protect society from the same.
Also, LIKE the sex law, those laws PROVIDE BACK UP FOR PARENTS WHEN ALL NORMAL OPTIONS HAVE FAILED. THAT is the point.
I can’t believe you would say “…Even with parental permission, kids still can’t buy alcohol, get a driver’s license, or go to strip clubs…”
That’s REALLY ironic considering that you’ve stated in this post that kids WILL do what they want considering sex regardless of what parents want.
PUH leeeez! Kids will TRY to “buy alcohol, get into dance or strip clubs or other adult places etc” and they CERTAINLY can drive without a license, nothing physically stopping them from “acquiring” the car keys and taking off for a joy ride!
Luckily for us, the cops are then able to stop them by nabbing their little butts as they attempt to use fake ID etc etc.
And no, don’t be so obtuse, getting into that sort of trouble is NOT “not eating one’s broccoli”.
It isn’t much of a point, then. The laws against underage drinking, driving, etc don’t “provide backup for parents” any more than laws against theft or jaywalking.
Why? Because parents aren’t involved in the law’s enforcement at all. A law that actually provides backup for parents, instead of merely restricting the rights of minors, would only apply at the parents’ request, and would not apply if the parents condone the behavior.
Neither of those are true of any of the laws you mentioned. A 17 year old can’t legally buy alcohol or cigarettes, a 15 year old can’t get a driver’s license, and a 14 year old can’t legally have sex in certain states, regardless of whether the parents approve. The only possible input parents have is choosing whether or not to report a crime they see their kids committing.
The only parents who are “backed up” by this law are the ones who refuse to let their kids have sex; the rest aren’t backed up, they’re undermined, because allowing their kids to have sex means covering up a crime.
I was hoping you’d realize I meant legally.
Sure, kids may be able to buy alcohol or get into a strip club… if they defraud the person who checks ID, or if there is no one checking ID. (Good luck doing that at the DMV!) But in any case, a crime has been committed, and the only thing keeping that kid (and possibly the store owner) from being convicted is that he didn’t get caught this time.
It’s certainly possible to break the law and get away with it most of the time, especially for laws against activities that take place in private and have no victims. Prohibition failed to stop alcohol use, the war on drugs has failed to stop drug use, and laws against teenage sex will fail to stop teenage sex.
Believe me, I’m not worried that teenagers will miss out on sex because of this law. They’ll still do it and most of them will get away with it. I’m worried that the few who are caught will be punished unfairly, and that the time, money, and effort that should be spent on harm reduction (sex education, contraception, clinics) or on pursuing real criminals will instead be spent locking teens up in a futile effort to discourage sex.
Whoosh. I ask again: If parents need “backup” in the form of getting their kids convicted of crimes and locked away when they won’t obey house rules, shouldn’t that apply to all house rules? If not, how should the legislature decide which house rule violations deserve a jail sentence? (Halfway house sentence, “happy fun zone” sentence, whatever you want to call it.)
Are you going to fund and defend psychological research into the benefits of teenage peer sexulity?
Tell me when you’ve done so and I’ll cite the work.
I feel real sadness for your children, having been raised by someone like yourself who openly admits that their life is terribly screwed up. But as they say, none of us gets to choose our parents.
Nonsense. Your and others’ arguments defending legal child abuse is a campaign.
Yet another of your tiresome falsehoods. In my previous post, I responded to most every word you wrote to me!
I understand your psychological need to lash out so desperately against someone who has so thoroughly debunked your absurd child-harming assertions contrary to fact. Oh, well.
Will you ever tire of spewing such laughable inanities? What on earth makes you think that people reading these threads bother to keep track of posters’ genders? Unlike you, clearly, I focus on what is said rather than who is saying it! But I apologize for not remembering the incomparably important fact that you have a vagina and not a penis.
As for the other “pro” posters, I repeat that not a one of them has provided anything approaching a sound and valid logical argument defending their support of legal child abuse.
No, it’s the reader’s resonsibility to read carefully, which you apparently couldn’t manage. Perhaps that’s because your life was so terribly screwed up by your teenage foray into perfectly natural and normal sexuality, or perhaps it’s because you took shop classes instead of Algebra II?
Laughing…and shaking my head. Holy cow I’m glad you’re gay!!! Not that I wouldn’t see you coming from 2 miles away should you be anywhere within my dating pool.
“lash out so desparately” “absurd child-harming” blah blah blah.
Keep going, sweetheart, soon you’ll be ready for “As the World Turns” with all that melodrama.
I notice that you once again managed to ignore my previous answers to your above questions and statements. I have little faith that you’re here for anything other than to stir up trouble, but, what the heck, I’m bored, you seem a semi-lively mouse to bat about so I’ll answer.
Here goes.
quote:
Originally posted by CanvasShoes
I just have one thing to say to your utterly ridiculous, unsustantiated claims.
Large collection?..and “blather mindlessly at some length”?
Boy, it must be hard for you to get through a pamphlet or a leaflet if you find 5 or 6 sentences to be a “large collection” or “blathering at length”. (ps, I DID notice you declined to provide proof yet again).
quote:
Originally posted by CanvasShoes
Cite? You have so many “facts” in your lengthy, preachy post, but you have not backed one of them up with any real data.
Ah, a POST of yours which is little more than a literary reference and an outdated one at that, and is but ONE article. Of course we have only your word as to what that article contains.
quote:
Originally posted by CanvasShoes
Oh, and FTR? I’m not a man. I AM however the parent of two teens. Well, one is no longer a teen, she’s 23. You obviously missed my parental response when she became sexually active.
Laughing at your attempts here. Again, you not only missed my ORIGINAL description of what I actually did when my daughter became sexually active, you read this, a reference to it, ignore it again, and exaggerate what I said regarding “screwing up one’s life”.
By the way, all of us describe QUITE thoroughly in the preceding 8 pages what we mean by this phrase.
My life is not CURRENTLY “screwed up terribly” but as I described several pages ago, having sex too soon was detrimental to what I COULD have accomplished at a much younger age, had I not had sex too early and gone down paths that were not good choices for me because of that.
Currently? I have a very good life. My point (but then, when aiming at a head made of granite it’s not likely to do much good) is that parents want MORE than what they “messed up on” for their children. Not just in matters of sex. In loving their children they hope that they won’t make the same mistakes. It’s not just in sex that parents try to protect their children from things for which they’re not ready.
quote:
Originally posted by CanvasShoes
Also, I haven’t “campaigned” for any of this, neither have any of the other parents in this thread.
Please provide a cite that this law and others like it are in any way child abuse. If so, then we are “abusing children” for putting them in halfway houses for drugs, or abusive behaviour, or for stealing cars and robbing 7-11s.
Also, a person can debate one side or the other of an issue, and even bring in his/her personal experiences regarding such and not be “compaigning” for said issue. Semi-mediocre try though.
quote:
Originally posted by CanvasShoes
But of course you ignored anything we said which you couldn’t use to attempt to sharpen your “wit”.
No, actually you didn’t. Only that which you could use to be obnoxious, that which “merely” showed another person offering information/explanations you completely ignored, especially if answered some of your attempts at sarcasm.
PS, regarding the “young teens had sex for millions of years before the current society so it’s been PROVEN to be natural, normal and desireable behaviour”.
Well, if all your friends jumped off a bridge would you do it too? What a laughable argument. Our ancestor’s also thought nothing of beating the brains out of “enemy” encampments so as to steal their women, food and supplies. It was “natural and normal” to not brush one’s teeth, or to bathe either.
LOTS of things used to be natural and normal. But when people find a better, more successful way to do things, most of them are going to want to stick to at least SOME semblance of that “better way”.
Trying to keep kids from growing up too fast and having to face the consequences of sex too soon, IS in many people’s hearts and minds a “better way”.
You disagree, fine. Do so.
And now, like others in this thread have LONG said, the horse needs a decent burial.
I repeat: We simply – and correctly – pointed out that teenage peer sexuality is perfectly normal and natural and that the effect of using the laws against this perfectly normal and natural behavior are FAR more devastating and life-destroying than anything the teens did (especially considering that they’ve already DONE it before being cruelly sent to juvie prison!)
How, again, does adding severe injury to harmless, perfectly innocent and natural behavior serve these kids or society?
Thank you for once again demonstrating what a contemptible, self-admitted screwed-up hate-monger you proudly present yourself to be. I truly hope it’s a pose. But considering those remarks, it comes as little surprise at all that you have such difficulty reading above 8’th grade level and that you so vehemently support legal child abuse!
And why am I not surprised that you need to be looking at your “dating pool”?
The truth really hurts you, obviously! It appears that those old platitudes have a considerable amount of validity.
Ah, yet more juvenile abuse and blatant evasion. I’ve come to expect nothing more from you!
What is this sick obsession you have for repeatedly telling bald-faced lies? As I correctly reported above, I have replied to virtually every word you’ve so mindlessly spewed at me! It is YOU who have so cravenly and disingenuously refused to reply rationally and intelligently to my arguments!
But then, you very much appear to lack faith in and genuine love for your children and anyone else’s children, so fortunately no rational, caring, loving person is going to buy your ultimately harmful and foolish assertions.
Another of your typical denial of the facts. You’ve told quite a number of falsehoods in your posts to me, and one of the very minor ones is when you falsely asserted that you will have only “one” thing to say to me but then go on to blather mindlessly at some length. I noticed that as another of our countless and shamefully dishonest tactics, you deliberately edited out the word “some” from your re-quotation of my actual words. I never said you were “blathering at length”, I said you were “blathering at some length”. Since you tend to represent yourself as an expert on all things, please explain for us all why FOUR things (not counting your subsequent mindless blather) is actually only ONE thing, and why FOUR things and 5-6 sentences absolutely does not qualify for being referred to as being of “some length” in contrast to “one” thing!
Originally posted by CanvasShoes
Cite? You have so many “facts” in your lengthy, preachy post, but you have not backed one of them up with any real data.
Originally posted by ambushed
Nor have you provided any cites that demonstrate that legal persecution of perfectly normal and natural behavior is anything but child abuse! Also, please re-read my post to Suse here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb...691#post3946691
What childish and evasionary responses you expectorate upon us! Did you actually think that spewing “Nyah, nyah, nyah” like that could be mistaken for serious debate?
I believe you did! That would be astonishing for someone else, but sadly not for you.
Furthermore, it is clear that you once again failed to comprehend my very simple post! You desperately need to work on your reading skills. Literary reference? Outdated article from five years ago? You astound me with your extreme hatred for truth and reason and honesty! How long have you been working on losing all those virtues? Or does it come naturally?
Originally posted by ambushed
I feel real sadness for your children, having been raised by someone like yourself who openly admits that their life is terribly screwed up. But as they say, none of us gets to choose our parents.
Liar! You explicitly and unambiguously emphasized that YOUR life was badly “screwed up” by your teenage sexual experiences! That’s one of the primary reasons you gave to explain why you are so callously adamant in supporting legal child abuse!
Yes, you explicitly and unambiguously emphasized that YOUR life was badly “screwed up” by your teenage sexual experiences! That’s one of the primary reasons you gave to explain why you are so callously adamant in supporting legal child abuse! It’s deeply disturbing to see what lengths you will go to in prevaricating and denying your own words!
More desperate back-pedalling and denying that you explicitly and unambiguously emphasized that YOUR life was badly “screwed up” by your teenage sexual experiences, and that that’s one of the primary reasons you gave to explain why you are so callously adamant in supporting legal child abuse! As I said before, that fact disqualifies you from claiming objectivity in this debate.
That’s what you would say now, of course! It may even be true, but if it is, that only proves that in the extremely rare case that teenage peer sexuality produces some minor harm, it’s far less life-destroying and psychologically devastating than your lust for police-backed power over your children, not to mention your adamant support of legal child abuse!
Yawn.
Yes, I know those are the self-defensive lies that people like you tell themselves to justify their failure to genuinely love and respect their children. With such parents as yourself, they are self-rationalizations for their deeply rooted lust for power over their kids and their desire to own them and live vicariously through them. If you genuinely loved and respected your teenage children, you would love and honor them enough NOT to threaten their or their peers’ very lives with your contemptible and cowardly and responsibility-evading legal extortion!
Now, I certainly very strongly believe that truly loving parents’ wishes to protect their children from legitimate harm is a primary and well-justified motivation for trying to steer their child’s decisions. That’s what parenthood is largely about! BUT:
(1) By the time they’re teens, there are an increasing number of life areas in which parental interference – particularly via the cops! – is increasingly harmful and damaging, even though parents like you will not be able to truly understand that. One such area is the kids’ own decisions on their readiness for mutually consensual teenage peer sexuality.
(2) In certain cases, such as their intimate lives, refusing to allow the teenager to learn from his or her own mistakes is far more damaging to the child than permitting them to learn from real-life experience!
I understand perfectly why someone like you would consider it harmless and not any kind of child abuse at all for teenage inmates to be sexually molested, raped, and/or psychologically tormented during their confinement. For child-haters, that’s far better than letting them make their own intimate decisions!
But even though you have so cravenly and evasively refused to provide – actually you’ve been utterly unable to provide – the evidence I’ve asked for, here’s some cites and quotations about the enormous, life-long, and undeniable harm of juvenile incarceration, which is extremely commonly used in lieu of any “halfway houses”:
But you child-hating types clearly prefer to throw kids who’ve done nothing but engaged in a perfectly normal and natural behavior into life-ruining juvie prison! How can you live with yourselves?
But I’ve every reason to believe from your “arguments” that a few deaths won’t even slightly deter your adamant support for throwing kids who’ve done nothing but engaged in a perfectly normal and natural behavior into life-ruining juvie prison!
See also: “Preventive Detention and the Judicial Prediction of Dangerousness in Juveniles: A Natural Experiment,” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86, no. 2 (1996): 415-448.
I could go on and on and on, but people like you who hate the truth and so adamantly support legal child abuse have absolutely no respect for the facts.
Another DEEPLY dishonest and bogus assertion!! Your “arguments” are so cheap and offensive that they’re beneath contempt. Leave it to you child-haters to deliberately conflate perfectly innocent, normal, and natural behavior with criminality! How you can live with yourself is utterly beyond my comprehension.
That may be technically true, but you – YOU – are a terrifyingly adamant campaigner for legal child abuse!
Originally posted by CanvasShoes
But of course you ignored anything we said which you couldn’t use to attempt to sharpen your “wit”.
Originally posted by ambushed
Yet another of your tiresome falsehoods. In my previous post [and in this one, too!], I responded to most every word you wrote to me!
Lies, lies, LIES! What is this obsession you have with repeatedly issuing such flagrant falsehoods? Have you, in the end, no shame? No shame at all? Gah!
Holy Bob! Who’s laughable?? Sheesh!! That’s got to be one of the stupidest responses I’ve ever seen here!
First of all, you sad, sad prevaricator, I never wrote that!! You lie and lie and lie and lie! You are without a doubt the most disingenuous person I’ve ever encountered on this board!
You clearly cannot offer any rational and adult response to any of my adult arguments so you quite typically turn to yet more cheap, insipid and shockingly dull-witted juvenilia. How proud your family and friends must be of you!
Furthermore, **EVOLUTION AND NATURAL SELECTION AREN’T ANYTHING AKIN TO YOUR CHILDISH “JUMP OFF BRIDGES” ANALOGY!**I hope you don’t have any respect for yourself, but if you do, judging from your posts here it’s clearly based on self-deceit.
Oh, I love it! Where do you keep coming up with such juvenile and laughably pseudo-scientific nonsense? According to your shockingly ignorant premise (which is totally and utterly uninformed by anything approaching science or reason), intelligently deciding for yourself if and when to engage in mutually consensual teenage sexuality is morally equivalent to making war! Yep, you’ve demonstrated once again what kind of person you are. How I pity your kids!
For truly loving and caring parents, I’d tend to agree. I very much doubt that you qualify for such appellations, however.
BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT’S UNDER DEBATE HERE!
What we’ve been debating from the very start is whether or not destroying teenagers’ lives by threatening or carrying out your adamantly supported lust for revenge under the guise of legal child abuse is good for teenagers or not! Can’t you keep track of the discussion, or are you finally admitting that you have nothing of any merit to say in defense of your cruel and malevolent position?
I’ve not only disagreed with your pathetic, false, and ultimately child-harming assertions, I’ve overwhelmingly established that they’re terribly cruel and are deeply, deeply unethical!
I hope that means you’re surrendering and departing! This thread has seen far too much anti-child evasion and bullshit from people like you already.
You can’t be serious. Remember when you gave this “cite” for the assertion that minors can’t handle sex:
Those sound a lot older than 1998, don’t you think? Not to mention a lot vaguer and more “literary”. Now here’s ambushed’s cite:
I typed the title into Google and immediately found this PDF file and this HTML document. Let’s take a look at the report’s conclusions. (bolding mine - I don’t know if these are the parts ambushed wanted to point out, but they seem relevant)
I suppose one could argue that sex between two adolescents is somehow more harmful and less normal than sex between an adult and an adolescent, but it doesn’t seem very likely.
OK, so this law serves the interests of parents who’ve had bad experiences with sex, and want to protect their children from similar problems.
What about parents who had positive experiences with sex (or negative experiences with strict anti-sex rules) and want to let their kids safely enjoy sex? This law undermines them, it doesn’t help them.
Comparing consensual safe sex to abusive behavior, auto theft, and robbery… doesn’t it hurt to stretch that far?
(Though, frankly, I wouldn’t call the law “child abuse” either. Abuse is locking your kid in a closet or beating him with a yardstick, not reporting his crimes to the police. You don’t get a trial before the yardstick.)
Looks like I’m the good cop and you’re the bad cop, then? I dig. I think you could tone it down just a bit, though; this is still GD.
You just had to bring me up again, after I had left this thread.
Since your points are so spurious and your thought process so depraved, I guess I can spare a minute to debunk them.
Hard facts:
Most children born to teen mothers have adult fathers.
This law makes consensual sex between teens illegal, but does not punish teens for having sex with adults.
The kind of teen who you think this law is aimed at (although the law itself makes no such distinction) is exactly the kind of teen who would look for an adult sexual partner to avoid punishment by this law.
Unless you are now going to say that the teens this law should be aimed at really do just want to have sex with their significant other, in which case your point becomes far more vile than before, you must admit that offering an incentive to wild teens to have sex with adults, who ALREADY father most of the babies of teen mothers, is a despicable action.
So let me get this straight… you think that a law which pushes wild and wanton teens into having sex with adults, which is far more likely to result in a baby, and punishes other teens severely for having sex with someone their own age who they care about, is a good thing?
And after all this evidence to the contrary, you are still unwilling to see the obvious?
Let me be clear: if your pet law pushes even one teen into a relationship with an abusive adult, instead of a natural relationship with someone their own age, I will hold you personally responsible.
If even one teen is abused in whatever place they are confined for consensual sexual contact with someone their own age, you are morally responsible. (And again - hard facts are present in this thread that such things do happen.)
If you are fine with having such barbaric atrocities on your conscience (if you have one), then there is nothing more to be said. But please, don’t come in here talking about “hard facts”, when you have been shown multiple facts disproving your ignominious opinions, and have simply ignored them in favor of your own abominable ideas, which do not share the quality of being based on any facts whatsoever.
