Over at the libertarianism community on ElJay, lefthandedninja asks, "Do you think possessing child pornography should be a crime?" in reaction to this article. (Apparently, instead of turning in his final exam, some dumbass turned in a CD full of child porn.)

Fantastic.

kadeshaderow gets things started off the right way by asking, "Are you fucking retarded?" and then continues to splooge all over the place. (Now with bolding and underlining action!)

The wank then moves on to whether or not the age of consent is arbitrary, and whether that even pertains to the subject at hand since the CD turned in contained pictures of very young children.

vox_soli feels the need to tl;dr to the max about how she is an anarchist and actually SAYS, "I more or less think that it's okay as long as the child in question has a sufficiently mature understanding of the whole idea of sexuality to consent and there isn't any question of coercion or undue influence from an authority figure." She, cyclotron, and ragnarok20 go on to have a nice healthy debate over whether or not you can define a law if you don't actually believe in laws.

But! ragnarok20 simply cannot take this lying down! Instead of replying on the first post, he has to make a whole new post about how big of an idiot kadeshaderow is.

Thankfully, this post looks semi splooge-free at the moment, but the second the usual suspects show up, it'll explode, mark my words.

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khym_chanur
2007-01-11 05:07 am UTC (link)

Of course the age of consent is arbitrary. It has to be, because it has to be the same in all cases. If it wasn't, it'd have to be decided on a case by case basis, and how would you prove in a court of law that someone was or wasn't mentally mature enough to give meaningful consent to having sex? Plus, the behind prosecuting someone for statutory rape is that the adult is mentally mature enough to realize that they shouldn't have sex with someone who's mentally immature, which is why you don't prosecute two 15 year olds for statutory rape for having sex with each other. If you decided on a case by case basis, in the case of a very mentally mature 14 year old having sex with a mentally immature 16 year old would you have to prosecute the 14 year old for statutory rape? And... well, it'd just be a tangled nightmare to do it that way.

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	seiberwing 2007-01-11 05:36 am UTC (link)
	And if you're 16 and your ___friend is 19, perhaps you might want to hold off on the sex for a year or two anyway. (Reply to this)(Parent)

damnedfallacy
2007-01-11 06:04 am UTC (link)

A lot of states have introduced an age difference provision for consensual sex among post 14 year olds (i.e. consensual sex and two years or less in age difference =/= statutory rape).

Anyway, how the hell can a 15 year old who is a month shy of 16 having consensual sex with a just barely 17 year old boyfriend compare to any kind of rape, let alone that of a young child?

~wipes up~

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iwanttobeasleep
2007-01-11 06:59 am UTC (link)

Anyway, how the hell can a 15 year old who is a month shy of 16 having consensual sex with a just barely 17 year old boyfriend compare to any kind of rape, let alone that of a young child?

Yeah, but with that logic, why not two months from 16? And then by that, why not three? I mean, if a month doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, then there's no reason you can't just keep subtracting it. Which is why we have to keep the laws arbitrarily set, because that's the only way that we can draw a line. From there, we just have to hope for DA's that will plea bargain the kids out if they can't wait a month.

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mmanurere
2007-01-11 07:30 am UTC (link)

This is why I can see the logic behind age-difference laws. "If it's consensual (of course) and if the two partners are within 2 years of age, it's OK." Of course, "2 years" is another kind of arbitrary...but it like you say, arbitrary but clear and reasonable is what we're aiming for here.

(Of course, if "reasonable" were something which everyone could agree on, we wouldn't have wank...)

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	damnedfallacy 2007-01-11 05:13 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, sorry. I wasn't clear. I firmly believe in a "this far, no further" age limit. Over that age limit, the statute should allow for consensual sex between people, neither of whom is in a position of authority over the other, within a two year age difference. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lizzypaul 2007-01-11 08:32 am UTC (link)
	My Dad's a cop, and he says that a lot of times, age of conset rules are useful to buy time. Like, normal 17 year old having sex with her 18 year old boyfriend? No one's going to bother with that. But if that 18 year old is wanted in another crime but there's not enough evidence, age of consent is a good excuse to get him off the street. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	khym_chanur 2007-01-11 08:59 am UTC (link)
	I don't like the idea of a law (or certain subset of violations of the law) which can technically be violated, but is only enforced when there's some unrelated reason to enforece it. I mean, if you're going to do that, why not pass a law making it illegal to breath, then only use it agaisnt the bad-guys? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

lizzypaul
2007-01-11 10:31 am UTC (link)

Oh, I agree. With a dad who is a cop and a mother who has been a prison chaplain, I have very little faith in the US justice system. (NOT that I'm an anarchist "don't believe in crime" loon.) But laws don't mean a whole hell of a lot when it comes down to it.

And the flipside of the age of consent thing is that you will always have some egotistical asshole who will prosecute the 18 year old for having sex with a 17 year old 2 months shy of her birthday, just because he can. I love cops, don't get me wrong, and DA's have a hard, thankless job...but damn, they have a lot of power and a lot of potential to use that power abusively.

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	funwithrage 2007-01-11 07:14 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah: in my experience, AoC laws only get enforced when there's actually a vastly underaged partner involved, when someone (parents, generally) makes it impossible for the authorities to ignore, or in the situation you describe. Teenagers would be even angrier, otherwise. If that were possible. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	digigirl132 2007-01-11 10:05 pm UTC (link)
	Or if the underage half of the couple is female, and she gets pregnant/the parents find out. stares at co-worker (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	funwithrage 2007-01-12 02:10 am UTC (link)
	That's pretty much what I was thinking of in the second scenario. That and a really awful MTV movie called "Jailbait," in which the girl's archrival tells the authorities so she can have the boy to herself, ZOMG. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	thekiwiwhoflew 2007-01-11 11:54 am UTC (link)
	Oh my God. But I had sex with a 22 year old with the brain capacity of a 13 year old D=! hands self in for the cops (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jerel 2007-01-11 04:57 pm UTC (link)
	I was just thinking much the same thing. Am I under arrest because my last boyfriend had the maturity of a 14-year-old? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	thekiwiwhoflew 2007-01-11 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	We should start a crime ring. I wonder what category this would fall into.. Intellectual Pedophilia maybe? (Reply to this)(Parent)

	thekiwiwhoflew 2007-01-11 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	No. Wait. We shouldn't start a crime ring. I don't think I could date someone whose biggest aspiration in life was to get laid as many times as possible again and keep my sanity. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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