Random General Headlines

[Minpin]

I would totally be against someone from high school dating someone from elementary school.

Isn't that just as arbitrary as the laugh out loud logic? I'm not sure of the schooling system where you are but here we have primary (5/6yo - 11/12yo) then high school (12/13yo - 17/18yo), an 18 year old should not be having sex with an 12 year old. I know that's probably not what you're saying, but you are going to have to come up with something clearer than that. Under 18 no more than two years age difference is by no means perfect but its clear, and I doubt I'll see a better idea.As I've said, putting her in gaol ISN'T the answer.

I think this issue could be resolve by having a decent acceptable gap age.

such as...?

What would you do if two 14-year old had consensual sex? You would throw them both in juvenile detention?

Ahhh no. It's a different circumstance, there's a different risk of it being predatory. I would hope that they'd received quality sex ed at both school and home. I do think age based consent is the best way to go*. Reading allegros link a few posts up (the interesting one), the gender stuff WAS interesting, and I'm curious as to how this would be treated if it was an 18 year old male having sex with a 14 yo girl, and even more curious if it had've been an 18 year old male having sex with a 14 yo boy. I'm wondering if the nature of the sex is contributing to the reaction.

EDIT: *sorry that's a bit misleading, especially after you brought up two same aged sexual partners. I'm referring only to the age gap.

[Minpin]

Um, no. I teach these kids, I spend five days a week with them: they have sex (all kinds of sex), most of it is consensual, most of it is fun. They have very meaningful and intimate relationships, and it's not because an 18 yr old guy is dating a 15 yr old girl that the guy is a predator and the girl completely unable to consent. Is she going to be heartbroken when he dumps her? Sure. Is that the most likely outcome? Absolutely. We can't protect teens from that, and we shouldn't: it's part of growing up.

I appreciate that the age difference doesn't automatically make someone a predator or negate consent, but I do think there's a need to protect teens from feeling pressured. I just think if an 18 yo showed interest in a 13 yo there'd be a higher likelihood of a blurring between obliging and consent. I think that no more than two years age gap would help prevent that. The different rate of development between the sexes you mentioned lends some weight to that don't you think?

[Deepvoid]

Isn't that just as arbitrary as the laugh out loud logic? I'm not sure of the schooling system where you are but here we have primary (5/6yo - 11/12yo) then high school (11/12yo - 17/18yo), an 18 year old should not be having sex with an 11 year old. I know that's probably not what you're saying, but you are going to have to come up with something clearer than that. Under 18 no more than two years age difference is by no means perfect but its clear, and I doubt I'll see a better idea.
As I've said, putting her in gaol ISN'T the answer.
such as...?
Ahhh no. It's a different circumstance, there's a different risk of it being predatory. I would hope that they'd received quality sex ed at both school and home.
I do think age based consent is the best way to go*. Reading allegros link a few posts up (the interesting one), the gender stuff WAS interesting, and I'm curious as to how this would be treated if it was an 18 year old male having sex with a 14 yo girl, and even more curious if it had've been an 18 year old male having sex with a 14 yo boy. I'm wondering if the nature of the sex is contributing to the reaction.

EDIT: *sorry that's a bit misleading, especially after you brought up two same aged sexual partners. I'm referring only to the age gap.

My laugh out loud logic was pointed towards the term "adult", which I believe was used in one if the first post about this topic.
The exact quote from sutekh was "she's an adult and she transgressed the law to have sex with an underage girl. Where is the injustice in her prosecution?"

That's why I brought up the 17 yo and 360 days.

I do not think an 18 year old should have sex with an 11yo
While I recognize that arbitrary might be the only way to set rules I personally believe the current Florida law is too conservative and doesn't reflect the reality of 2013.

As I stated the age of consent is 16 here as well. However, we do have have what I consider fair gap age.

12-13 can have sex as long as gap is no greater than 2 years.
14-15 can have sex as long as gap is no greater than 5 years.

Nothing to make you cringe or feel uncomfortable as far as I am concerned.

Remember, the state of Florida is saying the age of consent is 18 but you can have sex at 16 as long as your partner is no older than 23. That's a 7 year gap! I think it's a lot creepier than having a 14 dating an 18. In my mind, this makes no sense. But it does prove that it's American culture surrounding sex is still very conservative and not an accurate portrait of what teenagers do these days.

I believe it was Digitalchaos who said it, but this leaves the door wide open for discrimination.

[Deepvoid]

If Hunt was a dude in this country, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. The media loves this shit.

My point is that Hunt would not be prosecuted in Canada. We have other people that deserve jail time more than teenagers having consensual sex.
If she had forced herself on the 14yo, I would be the first in line to throw her in jail.
They had sex toys for Christ sake. They knew what they were doing.

[allegro]

Look, you can bitch about this until the cows come home but it is what it is. Is the U.S. sexually conservative? Maybe, particularly with teens. Parents are perhaps given a lot more control of teens, here (teens can't even get their own on-demand morning after pill, even though the FDA deemed it as safe). Is that going to change? Maybe, but change is slow. If you're using this as just one more way to bitch about the U.S., I think perhaps you should start a thread just for that (so we don't continue to pollute the "General Headlines" thread with one lipstick lesbian who refused to honor a 14-yr-old girl's parents' request to back off).

I don't care if the 14-yr-old "knew what she was doing*," her parents said NO. End of story. That's the law. She can run away from home and become a juvenile delinquent, but "honor thy parent" is the rule of law around here.

To YOU this isn't important enough for criminal charges (although you're very busy discussing it as if it's the biggest legal case in years), but to the parents of that 14-year-old, it's serious. Does any of this warrant all this media attention? If this was an ugly fat dude, you would have never heard of this case.

(*You can read lots of stories about child slavery and child porn, where 8-year-olds know how to wield a dildo and give a mean blowjob, but that doesn't make it legal. Or moral. Or correct. Are 8-year-olds sexual? Probably. There's evidence that 2-year-olds experience sexual arousal. But that doesn't mean we allow them to have sex.)

I believe it was Digitalchaos who said it, but this leaves the door wide open for discrimination.

He's not legally correct.

We still have SODOMY laws on the books in many states. If you want to bitch about old-fashioned sexual mores, then that's probably a better focus.

[Deepvoid]

Look, you can bitch about this until the cows come home but it is what it is. Is the U.S. sexually conservative? Maybe, particularly with teens. Parents are perhaps given a lot more control of teens, here (teens can't even get their own on-demand morning after pill, even though the FDA deemed it as safe). Is that going to change? Maybe, but change is slow. If you're using this as just one more way to bitch about the U.S., I think perhaps you should start a thread just for that (so we don't continue to pollute the "General Headlines" thread with one lipstick lesbian who refused to honor a 14-yr-old girl's parents' request to back off).

I don't care if the 14-yr-old "knew what she was doing*," her parents said NO. End of story. That's the law. She can run away from home and become a juvenile delinquent, but "honor thy parent" is the rule of law around here.

To YOU this isn't important enough for criminal charges (although you're very busy discussing it as if it's the biggest legal case in years), but to the parents of that 14-year-old, it's serious. Does any of this warrant all this media attention? If this was an ugly fat dude, you would have never heard of this case.

(*You can read lots of stories about child slavery and child porn, where 8-year-olds know how to wield a dildo and give a mean blowjob, but that doesn't make it legal. Or moral. Or correct. Are 8-year-olds sexual? Probably. There's evidence that 2-year-olds experience sexual arousal. But that doesn't mean we allow them to have sex.)


He's not legally correct.

We still have SODOMY laws on the books in many states. If you want to bitch about old-fashioned sexual mores, then that's probably a better focus.

Calm down miss. We're just exchanging on the subject, which obviously is interesting enough because a lot of people are participating in the discussion.
Feel free to share some other headline so we can switch subject.

For the record I stopped reading after the word bitch.

[allegro]

And you're back on my "ignore" list.

[DigitalChaos]

I believe it was Digitalchaos who said it, but this leaves the door wide open for discrimination.

He's not legally correct.

We still have SODOMY laws on the books in many states. If you want to bitch about old-fashioned sexual mores, then that's probably a better focus.

Wait what?
This law weighs heavily on the parent's discretion. It's almost always the parents who decide to bring this situation to court. Some parents may be heavily bigoted and decide that an age-gap situation is prosecution worthy simply because they are racist or homophobic. If the age-gap is outside the law, the oldest partner is then guilty. Doesn't matter if the prosecuting parents have additional motives... right? Seems pretty easy to selectively apply the law and discriminate, no?

[allegro]

An underlying prejudice does not create a crime where none occurred.

In other words, without the crime there is no case. So unless the accuser is lying, the accuser's prejudices do not open the door to discrimination because the discrimination doesn't create the crime. And a jury isn't gonna give one iota about any prejudices.

edit: see @DigitalChaos link below; my posting via Tapatalk sometimes results in goofy mobile links.

[DigitalChaos]

Yea, that's inline with what I was understanding with where discrimination influences this law. Doesn't matter in the court's view but the parents may be more likely to press charges if they have issues with the race/sex/etc of the partner.





fixed allegro's link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/2...-relationship/



So the 14yo's parents (allegedly) told Kaitlyn that the relationship was wrong but she didn't back down. They are also claiming this is a last resort option. Kaitlyn apparently knew that there were legal consequences for the relationship too.

[DigitalChaos]

From what I've seen, there is something that feels really off about Kaitlyn's parents and that side of the story. Something is just very suspicious.

Spoiler: i really hate that I am spending any time on this stupid fucking case but it's hard to resist legal and philosophical discussion

[DigitalChaos]

Some more:

"The Smith family finally decided to go to the police after their daughter ran away in January. She ended up staying with Kaitlyn."
http://southfloridagaynews.com/artic...unt-pay/122580


and this is just crazy:
"After Kaitlyn was arrested, she was kicked out of school, and forced to go to an alternative high school in the area. In an ironic twist of fate, on her first day she witnessed two girls making out in the restroom and ended up being a witness to the case. The two girls in that case were 18 and 15."

[allegro]

Some more:

"The Smith family finally decided to go to the police after their daughter ran away in January. She ended up staying with Kaitlyn."
http://southfloridagaynews.com/artic...unt-pay/122580

Ugh, they use "Smith's" with a possessive apostrophe for "Smiths" plural throughout the entire article. Journalism at its finest.

[Deepvoid]

Michele Bachmann won't seek reelection in 2014

Edit:

This keeps getting better.

Anonymous now getting involved int the Kaitlyn Hunt case.

[Elke]

I don't care if the 14-yr-old "knew what she was doing*," her parents said NO. End of story. That's the law. She can run away from home and become a juvenile delinquent, but "honor thy parent" is the rule of law around here.

See, that bothers me: in a country where glbt youth living on the streets and often resorting to criminal behaviour to make a living is an actual problem, a throwaway comment like that is more than cynical.

Parents don't always know what's best for their child. They often just guess. And a lot of times, the guess work is bad and the results are worse. Being a parent is difficult, I'd assume - I wouldn't know, and I'm not inclined to ever find out. But that doesn't mean that a 14 year old shouldn't at least have a voice in what happens to his or her own body.

If the parents had said You can't date this boy, because he is black, that would also have been their right. Do you really consider that so much different from You can't date this girl, because she is 18?

[DigitalChaos]

Then come up with a better law to protect children. You really think 14 year olds can deal with the life-long consequences of sex? Hell, even I don't believe that and I believe in maximum personal responsibility.

[Elke]

Better sex ed, easy access to condoms and anti-conceptives, easy (free) access to health care providers and parents who are willing to talk to their children about sex, intimacy, emotions and body awareness in a mature and open way.

I'm not saying you won't have teen pregnancies, and really awful first times. You will have a lot more safe sex, they'll start later, they'll talk to their partners and the sex will be happier.

[DigitalChaos]

Better sex ed, easy access to condoms and anti-conceptives, easy (free) access to health care providers and parents who are willing to talk to their children about sex, intimacy, emotions and body awareness in a mature and open way.

I'm not saying you won't have teen pregnancies, and really awful first times. You will have a lot more safe sex, they'll start later, they'll talk to their partners and the sex will be happier.

That's not a law. It's just ways to preemptively mitigate the issue. This is good, but you still need a law to define the boundaries for the inevitable actions and consequences that aren't caught by social plans like this. You need to define the line that must not be crossed and the consequences for crossing that line.

I, too, feel that the law is pretty broken but I can't figure out anything better. I'd love to get some new ideas!



Also, you were quoting @allegro in this post. What she said is actually the reality of the law. Parents are responsible for their children. Children have many rights that are protected, but there are several rights that the parents have control over until they turn 18. The only way around this is if the kid detaches from the parents. That's another one that certainly has negatives but I can't think of a better way.

[DigitalChaos]

An underlying prejudice does not create a crime where none occurred.

Question for you on this... I know that police are not allowed to be discriminatory when enforcing law. Is the line here simply "private citizen" vs "public law official" or is it equally applied? For instance, racial profiling is not universally illegal but in in many places it is. Sometimes, yes, it comes down to discovering the crime because of racial profiling. However, there are also times where it comes down to simply enforcing a law due to racial profiling. Ex: deciding to pull someone over for a broken tail light because they are black.

Sure, you'd have to prove it in court but... couldn't Kaitlyn prove that she is being targeted for her sexuality? If she did, would that somehow protect her from being prosecuted as a child predator?




Spoiler: by the time this thread is done I'll be able to pass the Bar! I'm starting to feel guilting for ask you so many legal questions.

[allegro]

Sure, you'd have to prove it in court but... couldn't Kaitlyn prove that she is being targeted for her sexuality? If she did, would that somehow protect her from being prosecuted as a child predator?

Well, no, because that assumes that what she did wasn't illegal. That's like a burglar saying he's targeted because he's black even though he just robbed a house. Kaitlyn committed a crime in her state, whether she likes it or not. Hundreds of males have been accused of the same crime; could they claim they were "targeted?" Also, the police chief on that video you and I linked said this is not an unusual case in his area, that this crime happens in many forms and they don't treat any cases differently. If Kaitlyn didn't DO anything and she was accused then, yes, she could claim she was unfairly targeted for doing something she didn't do. But her own MOTHER admitted that Kaitlyn had sexual relations with the 14-yr-old. "Profiling" occurs before we know that somebody has in fact done anything wrong.

I was thinking more about this, today, and I just can't picture my 18-yr-old self wanting anything to do with a 14-yr-old male or female. Yuck.

[DigitalChaos]

School teacher is reprimanded and docked a day's pay for telling students that they have a right to not self-incriminate on a survey asking about drugs an alcohol.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/29/sc...acher-for-tell

fucking schools. This is why most of my high-school teachers hated me. I'm not looking forward to when my kid gets older and I have to deal with public school workers again.

[mfte]

The IRS is getting sued.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/tea-party-groups-sue-irs-claim-targeting-was-widespread/article/2530796


Does this mean that the tax payer will be funding their defense?

[DigitalChaos]

Absolutely unbelievable. Woman calls 911 because a guy is about to break in and rape her. 911 basically says "lol, sorry I can't send anyone... maybe you can ask him to go away? I can call the sherif tomorrow for you" ... The woman then gets choked and raped.

aaaaaand the Statists respond like the fucking mafia with the "That's what you get for not giving more money to the government! Maybe now you want to pay up bitch?"







http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/05/30...oes-unanswered
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3353199.html

[Deepvoid]

I'm speechless. 911 had nobody to send?
That's unbelievable...
There's got to be more to this story. I would assume this is a rural town and maybe police was 30 minutes away? Still, dispatcher screwed up big time. This was not an appropriate response.

[mfte]

http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2013/05/...o-budget-cuts/

Budget cuts. The cops only work Monday to Friday.


Maybe the FED can print some money to bail them out.

Sounds like its time to form a Militia.

[Dra508]

Love to bitch about paying for things, but then this comes around and who we going to blame? huh huh?

Housing prices are going up, who you gonna blame? Obama right? NO - hedge funds.

[allegro]

The sheriff’s department even put out a press release warning domestic violence victims to “consider relocating to an area with adequate law enforcement services.”

It's sad, but there's nothing anybody can do except protect themselves in whatever way they can. There are lots of unincorporated areas in this country that don't even HAVE 911 services. Those people have shotguns.

[DigitalChaos]

I'm speechless. 911 had nobody to send?
That's unbelievable...
There's got to be more to this story. I would assume this is a rural town and maybe police was 30 minutes away? Still, dispatcher screwed up big time. This was not an appropriate response.

It is rural but they are blaming budget cuts. Even if she was 30min away, it doesn't justify "we can call the police tomorrow"
The huffpo link questions the legitimacy of this being due to "budget issues." If it is budget cut related, it's really just more pro-tax/big-government extortion. Take away some taxes and they cut the most visible services so it hurts the tax payers the most.

[DigitalChaos]

It's sad, but there's nothing anybody can do except protect themselves in whatever way they can. There are lots of unincorporated areas in this country that don't even HAVE 911 services. Those people have shotguns.

Right after "fuck the mafia-like Statist response to this" I was thinking "why didn't this woman have a way to defend herself... ESPECIALLY if this guy has assaulted her before."

[Sutekh]

How is it wrong?

because an 18 year old is an adult and a 15 year old is not. People say there's not much difference, but there really is.

some people maure at a different rate, but these are exceptions, and it is not as if having sex with 15 year olds being unacceptable is buried in the small print, so my sympathy for people that want to have sex with a kid so badly that they transgress the law and accept worthless consent is pretty limited.

if you're going to say that it's ok for an 18 year old who is mentally as immature as a 15 year old to have sex with a minor of that age, I would ask why you don't extend that to morons of more advanced years? If you are still considered not an adult at the age of 18, there's something wrong with you, and it doesn't function as an excuse to sleep with minors

My mind is open, and I'm interested in what you have to say (that sounds a bit patronising but I enjoy your posts and my posts tend to come across as confrontational even though I am pefectly calm, so I thought I would just disclaim it quickly!)