So true, Guin, even in Mayberry, Andy had a longtime girlfriend.
Sex is nothing new, promiscuity is nothing new, blah blah blah…
So I suppose I long for something out of a utopian society, a place where responsible sex is valued by all.
Well, we all do.
I’m just tired of always hearing about “the good ol’ days”…which never existed.
Not true. the ‘good ol’ days’ were when I had hair…
I actualy manage to get out of this one by the following:
If she dresses like a slut, well hell; err, what does she expect to be interpeted as? Seriously, heh. Whore cloths == whore cloths.
The man on the other hand;
premaritial sex? MANWHORE.
Thus, I am debasing both parties equaly.
I’d just like to clarify that my first post wasn’t a shot at Shrew, and I’m not suggesting that Shrew is anti Justice 
It’s pretty hard for young men (I’m 23) these days. I don’t pick up random girls at parties or clubs, partly because I’m afraid to. The girls who frequent the clubs 'round here could be anything from 14 and up, and they all look pretty much the same.
There have been times I’ve been checking someone out who I thought was older only to find out shes 14, and there have been other times when I’ve dismissed a girl as being too young, went “ew!” only to later discover she’s older than me.
If I, or anyone else had casual sex without someone they met at a social gathering of their peers without acertaining their age and is then prosecuted for underage sex, what is the real crime? Is it knowingly “corrupting” or “endangering” a minor, or is the crime engaging in casual/irresponsible sex? Who is the real victim in this situation?
The age of consent here in Ireland is 17, and as far as I know there is no exemption for somebody 2 years older, younger or whatever.
I feel these types of laws are a mockery of what a modern legal system should be. To allow a 19 year old to have sex with a minor because they are “only” 2 years older and to prosecute and add to a list including rapists and pedophiles a 20 year old who has sex with the same minor flies in the face of sense, protects nobody and as a punishment does not fit the crime at all.
Having said all that, I have no idea how to fix any of this…
Just to throw another perspective into the ring…
My mother and father were married, in my grandparents living room, in 1954. At the time my mother was 16 years old and my father was 19. No, my mother was not pregnant at the time.
By all measures applied in this thread so far, my mother was too immature to make decisions for herself, my father was exploiting a youngster and a rapist?
Discuss…:rolleyes:
In 1960, my 16-year old aunt married her 24-year old boyfriend, and her mother had to be present to sign the license because the judge said my aunt didn’t look sixteen. They are still married.
In 1994, the young sister of a friend of mine, who was fifteen, snuck off to the Justice of the Peace, provided a “borrowed” urine sample, claimed to be pregnant, and was then married. She was divorced within six months, but she finished her master’s degree in Interior Design last year and managed to study in Italy for two summers.
Maybe the law hasn’t changed drastically, and maybe it has, but people have certainly changed. While I certainly don’t wish to call your father a rapist, I would definitely claim that your mother was too young (though I can’t judge her maturity) to be making decisions about marriage, and yes, quite possibly, your father was exploiting a youngster. Sit down and ask your father whether he thinks your mother was old enough to be married. And then ask whether he would have allowed you, at sixteen, to marry someone nineteen or older. As I stated in another thread, age gives us perspective that youth lacks. We don’t want our daughters and sons getting married at such young ages, or having sex at such young ages.
I have no desire to repeat certain common practices of the past simply because they are part of our heritage. If I have anything to say about it, my children will not marry at 16, nor will they have sex under the age of 18. But of course, as many parents can testify, I may not have anything to say about it.
My first girlfriend, when I was 18 (she was 16) left me for an older woman, a 22-year-old college student. It broke my heart, but the older woman was much better for her than i was, and the two of them stayed together for five or six years.
My brother, when he was 15, got semi-involved with a 21-year-old friend of mine. The two of them fooled around with one another for a year or so before drifting apart.
I really think it cheapens the word “rapist” to use it to describe my friend or the 22-year-old college student. And I’m not interested in cheapening that word.
Daniel
“Maybe if casual sex were less socially accepted…”
Or maybe you have it backwards… ever read Brave New World? If sex were MORE accepted, rather than less, we wouldn’t worry about it. Why shouldn’t it be accepted? Don’t use the social taboo card…I mean, in all honesty, is there any reason why it is so hush hush? Why is it morally wrong? The only reason I see is that people say it is. We wouldn’t have to worry about this if sex was more openly accepted…just a thought.
(No that does not apply to older people, like 20-30 or 40, taking advantage of little kids who don’t know any better, it applies to people who know what they’re doing.)
O and by the way, rape laws, at least in Massachusetts, are WAY to strict. Definition: Intrusion of a bodily orifice (be it oral, anal, vaginal, aural, etc…) by a foreign object (finger, penis, tongue, bottle, dildo… etc) without legal consent.
Legal consent cannot be given if you are under 18.
Therefore, putting anything other than your one of your own body parts in your mouth, if you are under 18, is illegal.
Food, or a fork, or a spoon, is a foreign object.
Mouth is a bodily orifice.
No legal consent under 18.
A minor is not allowed to eat, legally, in Massachusetts.
Bring this out further…
A kiss is rape, if one of the parties is under 18.
Tongue=Foreign object
Mouth=Orifice
Legal Consent=Not there, if under 18.
HOWEVER, a hand job IS legal.
No orifice is intruded, and is therefore not rape.
I guess what I’m saying is two things: if sex were more accepted we wouldn’t need to worry about this and yes, it is a time for a change in rape laws.
-j
“Religion is based on the fear of the many, and the cleverness of the few…”
OxyMoron - I agree with your reasoning concerning consent issues, but what’s your feeling on strict liability?
Sua
Sublime I"d appreciate a link to the law you’re referring to. The laws I’ve seen all specify something to the effect of ‘for purposes of sexual gratification’, since for example, a medical practitioner would have legitimate cause to insert things various places.
and, re: the hand job, again, the laws I’ve personally read mention contact of sexual organs, so the hand job would also be illegal.
Pretty much summarized here:
To me, you can’t separate the consent from the strict liability - one is the mirror image of the other.
I’ve read Huxley, and I can see your reasoning, but I disagree.
In the grander schemes of life purpose and the evolution of our species, I simply don’t see that casual sex improves us spiritually, emotionally, physically, or philosophically. Spiritually and philosophically, I feel that it robs us of a deeper existence; the purpose in our lives becomes clouded by meaningless acts with meaningless people…creating webs of false feelings and confused empty connections with people who mean nothing to us. Sex can create a new level of meaning in our lives when attained through pure intimacy, but I can’t fathom how casual sex can do likewise. If it can, please tell me how.
Emotionally, I weep for my students who shamefacedly tell me, “I don’t have no daddy,” or “My mama don’t know who my daddy is,” or “That not my daddy. He just some guy my mama sleeping with.” I realize I’m coming at that from my own Judeo-Christian bias, but I feel the children are robbed of an intimacy they could have had, which then puts many of them on a path searching for someone to love them. So many of them are emotionally scarred, and I don’t know how to help them besides loving them, but then I leave, and that hurts them too.
Physically, the propagation of our species through casual sex leaves me with a feeling of disgust for our gene pool. How can we find an identity as a people, or even competently predict hereditary ailments, if we lack any knowledge of our parents or forefathers? This yearning for knowledge is tolerated, even expected, out of adopted children, but we seem not to expect it from children of “random” parents. I realize who our parents are is completely arbitrary, but it doesn’t have to be THAT arbitrary.
I’m sure my argument has a million holes, so please feel free to help me think this through to a better conclusion if need be.
The way I see it, a single wrongly prosecuted case is one too many. Everyone matures at a different rate, and if two people consent to sex, the state shouldn’t step in and say “you belong to a group which we think is unable to make decisions, so yes means no until you are exactly N days old.”
There was a front-page story in a local paper (the Inlander if you’re near Spokane) entitled “Felonious Love”. A couple met over the Internet and hit it off quite well. The 20-year-old man didn’t learn that the girl was 13 until later, but he decided to buy her a plane ticket to meet him anyway. To make a long story short, nothing nonconsensual ever happened, the girl’s parents were shocked but not angry, and in fact they are now happily married - but the FBI got involved and now he has to register as a sex offender.
The FBI! Shouldn’t they be chasing terrorists instead of tearing young lovers apart?
If the “victim” doesn’t want to press charges, why does the state go ahead and do it for her? What’s next: after a schoolyard fight, both participants shake hands and are buddies again, but the cops haul them off to jail saying “you’re not old enough to understand the emotional consequences of fighting or to decide whether you want to make a criminal accusation, so we’re charging both of you with assault”?
I don’t see sex (casual or no) as improving, eroding, or in any way controling us, ‘spiritually, emotionally, physically, philosophically’ or otherwise. Sex is sex, people attach different things to it depending on the people involved.
I weep for the fatherless kids too. I weep for every child not born to the wonderful 2-parent 2-car garage suburban low crime sterilized candy land existance (sorta). Thats why I think we (Americans, that is) need to adopt a more realistic policy for teaching people about sex. It should be less of a legal issue and more of a social issue.
Unfortunately we have so many prudes in America who would rather bury their heads in the sand than talk openly and honestly about sex.
I was going to mention this as well. In my own state of Oregon this same rule of thumb depends very much on the jurisdiction where it occurs and who the prosecutor is.
I do recall one case where a girl has obtained fake ID and was in a bar and the man she had sex with was still charged, but this was later overturned at the state supreme court on the grounds that a previous verdict had set precident to the contrary and the state did not feel the original verdict was in error.
On the comments of those who say that “he should have gotten to know her better.”, legislating your own morality is what that is called. It has no bearing on legal aspects of the case, but may sway a jury admittedly. Chicago is a heavily Roman Catholic city and there may be a strong Catholic presence on the jury, but that does not mean that imposing your morals on an individual is right, even if it is popular.
Personally from what I know of this case and the two others pending in civil court as well as Mr. Kelly’s own history it seems likely that he is a suspicious charachter. He married the late Alyia (probably spelled that wrong), when she was 15 (later anulled), he has settled similar cases in the past and seems to be in the midst of doing so agin in two cases right now and the sister or cousin (can’t remember which right now) of this girl was a “discovery” of Kelly’s who set her young (13y/o) cousin up with Kelly because she knew he liked young girls and to assist her career (she should also be charged with something. Pandering maybe.). This was to help her career by ingratiating herself to Mr.Kelly. Pretty stinky business all in all.
On the young girl’s family, they do not want to charge Kelly, but it may be a pay day situation in that home and the cousin/sister who came foreward was dropped prior to her doing so. If he is guilty then everyone involved (with the possible exception of the young girl) should go to jail for being scumbags. The parents for willingness to cover this crap up and for allowing a 13 yo girl out in adult situations without a parent or guardian, the cousin/sister for passing off the young girl to assist her own career, and of course Kelly for being a fuzz-buster. Out of them all he seems like the least scumbag of them all, while still being a complete shitstain.
Psssst! Mayberry isn’t real.
shrew,
I think it would be helpful if you elaborated a bit on the following:
This is the same kind of teleological argument that has justified all sorts of social evil in the past. I certainly don’t mean any offense when I say this. But the moment someone invokes “the purpose of the human race,” well, I begin to get a little uncomfortable.
Exactly what purpose is this? Evolution is a random, haphazard thing that results in divergence just as often, if not more often, than convergence. How does a biological model support the idea of a common purpose of humanity?
For what it’s worth, I agree with everything you said personally. I find a life filled with casual sex to be anathema to my own spiritual makeup. However, it is a tremendous leap to assume that my purpose is that of the entire human race. Especially since procreation appears to be a biological imperative, to say the least.
while it’s true each person matures individually, the state requires attaining certain chronological levels for a wide variety of tasks/responsabilities/ other issues . "mandatory school til 16, can’t drive, drink, vote, sign contracts etc.
and yet, you think it’s feasible for us to somehow come up with a manner to determine sufficient emotional maturity to consent for sex?
I’ve met the man who said that the sexual contact he had with his 10 year old daughter was consensual. and that was 10 years after the fact.
and since he aint the only one, I’ve got less than zero problem weighing the issue of needing to protect his daughter, vs. allowing y’all the freedom from having to insure that you’re not committing a crime.
So, in short - I see no reason not to have a specific line.
and best advice to anyone is that to insure you’re not committing a crime, make sure that person you’re boinking is over the line.
RE: folks who’ve been ‘tricked’ etc. IMHO, let the court sort it out. In some cases (false ID, person slightly underage), were I on the jury, I’d let it slide. However, again, if you merely go w/the ‘she told me she was 16’ or ‘showed me ID’, what’s to protect the 5 year old when the perp makes the above claims (‘gee, ossifer, how was I supposed to know that valid ID’s aren’t done in crayon?’)
with rights come responsabilities. You may have a right to have consensual relations w/a willing partner, but you have the corresponding responsability to insure that said partner has the ability to consent.
There’s a huge difference between these things and sex, not the least of which is that sex is an inherant biological act while the rest of these exist solely within a social construct.
Yes I do, as long as there is a reasonable framework to establish suitable and unsuitable contexts for sex. It really isn’t that hard to talk about sex, and to talk to other people about sex. A little more awareness could go a long way in empowering people to make the right decisions for themselves, rather than trying to pass a Titanic-sized buck to our legal system. Making a social/legal policy based on knee-jerk reactions and fearmongering (‘if we don’t draw a line somewhere, daddys are going to rape their 10 year old daughters’) does not help IMHO.