Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[scriver]

Im not following the argument any more. When would it ever be illegal for a 19-year-old to have sex with an older person?

[Lord Shonus]

The issue, Reelya-- is that "18 and 19" are fully legal adults, that should be able to choose to bang a 50 year old, if that is what they really want.  Because they are legally grown assed adults.

This is not the circumstance of "17yr + 18yr" romeo/juliette. 

This is "19yr, in college, wants to date 25yr hunk. Hunk goes to prison, because more than 3 years older."


I agree that the age requirement is a sensible addition; just not with the cutoffs that have been mostly enacted, which exist to placate the "OMG!! STILL A CHILD!!" worldview that conservatives have about young people having sex.

Nowhere in the US is this scenario possible.

[wierd]

I was misreading the "min prosecution age/age of victim" column. 

Protip, don't read tables while tired, and bored out of your brain from listening to droning narrators from "online training videos."

[McTraveller]

That "morally acceptable" table is kind of hilarious in a sad way.

Look at what those trends are saying about society.  Not about the acts/categories themselves, but about the common things behind them.  Self above society, except when you creep me out or make me sad when I didn't want to be, is basically the trend there.  Self above society is a good way to destroy society and self.

It's also why I don't understand statements like:

Only 10% of Americans say they aren't proud of their nationality at all. It's a start, I guess.

Not that blind pride is a good thing, but when you have people who have no interest in their nationality then you get situations where people only do what's good for themselves: people running around spreading viruses, not caring about social programs, and the like.

National pride is what should make you sad and angry about the current state of affairs. Saying "it's America it is therefore good by default"  is fanaticism which is quite different.  The current civil rights movement is actually pride - people taking a stand for making things better.

Of course this is a language thing - pride is one of those complex words with two meanings: having pride in good work, for instance, has positive connotations, but "being prideful" generally has negative connotation.  "National pride" is one of those cases where it can be both positive or negative...

[martinuzz]

Not that blind pride is a good thing, but when you have people who have no interest in their nationality then you get situations where people only do what's good for themselves: people running around spreading viruses, not caring about social programs, and the like.

Lolwut?
What does having no interest in nationality have to do with only doing what's good for themselves?  Ever heard of internationalism and caring about not just the people in your own nation but about human beings in general? Greetings earthling?

The world would be a much much better place if the concept of nations would cease to exist.

[Frumple]

I mean... being particularly proud to be an american requires either wild ignorance (of history, of current conditions) or pretty extreme immorality, imo.

That more people seem to be waking up to the flat goddamn fact there's not much to legitimately be proud about in this country is probably a good thing. Hopefully helps better pave a path forward that isn't tainted with all the fucked up things we've gotten up to over the last ever

Basic bloody human decency is what should make you sad and angry about the current conditions, not national pride.

[McTraveller]

I feel like something got lost in translation there...

You have to start local, is all I mean.  Seriously, if you can't even keep your own room clean, how can you have "global decency"?

Maybe we need different words to describe this concept?  Or - I think I see what you are saying - it's a question of causality. You should have pride in what your <location> is doing because it is aiming for human decency, not just have pride because it is your <location>?

On the flip side - when you say things like "There is nothing to be proud about in this country" you are essentially saying that everyone in that country is worthless.  A nation is just people after all.  Making such absolute statements just causes people to stonewall.  Don't tell people they are worthless - give people reason to join you, not think you are categorizing them just because they live in a certain area.

[scriver]

The world would be a much much better place if the concept of nations would cease to exist.

Whether using the meaning of country or the meaning of people that statement is equally horrible and imperialist

[martinuzz]

Uhh no, it is egalitarian

[Il Palazzo]

All you people better properly define what each of you means by nationalism before you spend the next ten pages talking past one another.

[martinuzz]

I just don't see how instead of saying ' I am american' and ' I am dutch', saying 'I am a human being' is in any way imperialistic.
Or instead of saying 'I am from america'  or 'I am from the Netherlands', saying 'I am from planet earth'.
Nationalism / the concept of nation states is what brought us most if not all wars in the past 150 or so years.
It's an artificial division into we/they that has brought little to no good.

[scriver]

If there were no more nations as in countries: All peoples except one would be ruled by the laws of another people. There is an unstated opinion in this way of thinking where you assume that your laws should govern all other peoples. It is imperialistic and likely more than a little dutchman's-burden-y.

If there was no more nations as in peoples: You've just admitted you long for mass genocide of the peoples of the earth, a world where different cultures doesn't exist and all humanity is the same. Once again this comes with the unspoken implication that all humanity should belong to your nation and follow your culture. This is imperialistic and genocidal.

[Il Palazzo]

^you're conflating nations, countries, and peoples.

[Eschar]

The thing about unspoken implications is, since they're unspoken, you need to meet a high threshold before saying someone must be acting on them. If it's unspoken, by definition you probably don't have any clear examples that the person thinks that! You can't just say "there is an unstated opinion" and play Pin the Tail Undesirable Motivation on the Donkey.

TDLR: don't pin "unspoken opinions" on people.

[SalmonGod]

If there were no more nations as in countries: All peoples except one would be ruled by the laws of another people. There is an unstated opinion in this way of thinking where you assume that your laws should govern all other peoples. It is imperialistic and likely more than a little dutchman's-burden-y.

If there was no more nations as in peoples: You've just admitted you long for mass genocide of the peoples of the earth, a world where different cultures doesn't exist and all humanity is the same. Once again this comes with the unspoken implication that all humanity should belong to your nation and follow your culture. This is imperialistic and genocidal.

Except nation-states don't necessarily have any correlation with cultural peoples.  Nation-states can contain many wildly different cultures, and their boundaries can divide people of the same culture.

I'm all for the end of nation-states, but also all for the existence of many cultures.

IMO, communities should be allowed to govern themselves, which nation-states are not.  I feel no communal bond with the vast majority of other Americans.  And typically most people are a part of many different communities that intersect in many ways of differing natures requiring self-governance attending to different issues.  Nation-states do very little to help with this, and get in the way more often than not.