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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	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)

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