Some feminists do sometimes make absurd arguments any accusation of rape should be believed, but the standard in any court is still reasonable doubt. Almost certainly, a smart woman trying to make a rape accusation against a long-time partner stick would admit to the prior relationship because attempting to deny it would destroy all her credibility.

Then, it would come down to he said / she said. You'd probably want to introduce evidence indicating why all of a sudden your girlfriend is claiming you raped her. Evidence of any mental disorders she had would probably be admissible. Details of her prior sexual history would likely be admissible (see why many actual rapes might be unreported?). If you cheated on her and she found out, you'd want to introduce evidence of that. If you recently broke up with her, you'd want to introduce evidence of that. Anything that might give her a motivation to make a false accusation against you to hurt you.

If she all of a sudden, with no motivation whatsoever, claimed you raped her, then you might be in trouble, because why the hell would she do that? On the other hand, you might not be, because why the hell would you rape someone you routinely had consensual sex with anyway? The answer is that rape's not really sexual, it's more extreme bullying / wanting to dominate someone. So you'd want character witnesses that you're a nice guy and that she's a vindictive asshole.

Either way, in a trial like that, both your names would likely be dragged through the mud in public. It would be a nightmare for both of you. And, since he said / she said usually isn't enough for "beyond reasonable doubt", she'd probably lose. This is the basis for the claim that many rapes go unreported. It's probably true. Why would a rational, self-interested person want to drag her own name through the mud to hurt someone else? The only reasons for doing something like that would be to be vindictive -- "I don't care if I get hurt too as long as he does!" -- and altruistic -- "I want to stop him from hurting anyone else." For most people, both of these motivations are better for driving actions of minor consequence than actions of major consequence.

If you've been going out a while, you'll have probably been in a restaurant together more than once.

Anything can be faked. Nothing is 100%. But your position is ridiculous. People used to get married by living together and telling other people they were married, and after a while the state would agree they were married even though there was no official record of it. Courts look at evidence to determine facts, and there would be evidence of a prior relationship if it existed. Claims that you faked all the evidence and all the witnesses were lying would be discounted unless there was evidence that was the case.

No proof that someone is your long-term girlfriend?

Restaurant receipts if you go Dutch and both pay by credit card. Phone records. Facebook relationship status. Instant messenger logs. And, most importantly, witnesses, because presumably you do stuff together with other people and hold yourselves out to be a couple, or at least TOLD YOUR FRIENDS you were dating someone, and the girl's name.

Think about it. With any kind of normal romantic relationship, you could prove you're going out if you needed to.

If she weighs the same as a duck, then she's made of wood, and therefore? .... A WITCH!

Let's not do that, mmmkay? Someone does outrageous/illegal things at a conference, it's a matter for security, just like everywhere else. Political litmus tests for conference attendees is bound to end poorly.

We're not the Amish. We don't shun people. And here's how being Amish is working out for the Amish: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/amish...

PS this was an analogy like your Scotsman one. I think Amish subculture and self-isolation is terribly unhealthy, but I have nothing against them as people. I've seen either Amish or Mennonites many times at Chicago Union Station and they seemed nice enough.

"His point" is either paranoid lunacy, or he engages or would like to engage in casual sex a lot with women who may have an impaired ability to consent at the time. It's paranoid lunacy to think your fiance or long-term girlfriend is all of a sudden going to turn around and say you raped her, unless you do that. It's also very unlikely she could make the rape charge stick if she tried, unless you did that (there would be defensive wounds if you actually did rape her). Still, if you think there's any chance she'll try, you might want to get another girlfriend.

The casual sex part is if you go around trolling bars for one-night stands, and you have sex with someone who could barely walk to the bed at the time, you might get charged with rape, because what you did was maybe rape and definitely predatory and wrong.

Every person you meet has been harassed, if not sexually then some other way.

Some people are just asshats and like to annoy other people by harassing them. If it's a woman wearing remotely revealing clothing, they'll say, "Nice rack!". If it's a person wearing glasses, it'll be, "Hey four-eyes!". For another person, it'll be, "Hey goof-face!".

Unlike most people, these people enjoy the push-back they get from being annoying. They take pleasure in the responses to their asshatery. My girlfriend had a male classmate in elementary school repeatedly steal her eraser to make her chase him around the school to get it back. He kept doing it, so, obviously, he liked to be chased around, at least by her. Maybe he liked her.

He probably grew up. Most of these people grow up eventually. Not all, but most.

People who rape women (or men) are vile criminals who need to be locked up. People who make annoying, inappropriate/offensive comments to annoy other people are annoying.

Never heard of this, and doubt it. Could you post a link?

I notice all your links are to the UK. I thought the Chambers case was going to put a stop to that stuff in the UK. What bothers me most is that they even have people LOOKING online for stuff to prosecute. I'm pretty sure the US doesn't have police officers going through Facebook and Twitter trying to find offensive speech to bust people on.

Your links are disheartening. Perhaps the rest of Europe isn't that bad? In any case, the First Amendment is definitely one thing this country got very, very right.

Here's an old, but good, opinion article on free speech in Europe: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Giving up moderation to respond to an AC. Oh, what a world.

Stare decisis, and precedent in general, is much more important in common law countries. Germany is a civil law country. I don't have a very good understanding of civil law countries (I'm from a common law country, and common law makes more intuitive sense to me), but, from what I do understand, precedent sorta kind maybe a little bit matters, but courts can basically do whatever the heck they want, basing their decisions purely on the text of the statutes. They are specifically not bound by the interpretations of that law that they or any other court used in the past. You can only really be sure that precedent is going to be followed when a high court has consistently ruled a certain way in a variety of cases over time. And even then, they can really still do whatever they want.

This isn't so ridiculous as it sounds, because even in common law countries like the US, the Supreme Court can overturn itself, and has (such as Plessy v. Ferguson). It's just considered very bad form for a court in the US to overturn itself, so it doesn't happen too much. In civil law countries, it's only really bad form to overturn a precedent if the court has consistently followed that precedent in the recent past, so a ruling in a single case doesn't matter so much.

Regarding Mexico, you're making my point: even our developing southern neighbor, which has some pretty serious problems, has managed to move past the death penalty.

Regarding Europe, I said "Western Europe", which may have an impact on some of this stuff. I count three authoritarian regimes in Western Europe: Francisco Franco in Spain, Nazi Germany and its client states (such as Vichy France, which may be your fourth if you're counting it separately), and the German Democratic Republic. I'm curious exactly how you got to four. In any case, I was talking about Western Europe in its current political configuration -- all democracies -- so this historical discussion isn't really relevant.

I Googled Trifigura and nothing relevant came up. Perhaps you can let me know what you're talking about there. Free speech is high in Western Europe, though admittedly not as high as in the US. This is one thing I do admire about the US. The main free speech issue in Western Europe I'm aware of is the anti-Holocaust denial laws, which is a far cry from "a man can be imprisoned for saying anything on twitter that offends someone else". But, like I said, I think Western Europe should emulate the US on free speech and not the other way around.

---linuxrocks123

Words are defined by how they are used. So far in this thread we have ultranova, preaction, and linuxrocks123 agreeing that capital punishment can accurately be called murder, and we have LordLimecat disputing that usage of the word. Dictionaries sometimes take a while to catch up, but, looking at http://dictionary.reference.co... definition #5, it appears that this is clearly a correct usage of the word if you are asserting that capital punishment is inhuman or barbaric, which is exactly the way "murder" has been used in this thread. If you want to argue that capital punishment isn't murder because it is neither inhuman nor barbaric, you can do that, but you'll have to do better than "it's not murder because I say it's not" to convince many people.

This is a definitional issue akin to "killing babies". If you think the death penalty is morally wrong, then you think the state shouldn't have the right to do it, and then you think it's murder. You have a different definition. Good for you.

Strawman. No one is suggesting putting shoplifters in mental institutions for 20 years if they're not cured. If something that benign was that difficult to cure, a sane society would give the shoplifter a slap on the wrist, make a token effort at rehabilitation, and let the shoplifter go.

Not we. YOU believe in retributive justice. Most civilized countries have moved past that, as have I. The US, as usual, is a social backwater. Canada and Mexico have both gotten rid of the death penalty and won't extradite to us if the accused might face it. Western Europe has eliminated it. We're in the excellent companionship of Singapore and China and, if not for a Supreme Court ruling saying you actually had to have been involved in killing someone else to be eligible for state-sanctioned murder, probably would be killing people for drug trafficking just like they do. After all, what's a war on drugs without casualties?

---linuxrocks123

What about Dish?

Well, your kids still need some way to make their nest egg so they can buy their rental properties. What are they going to do to get that starting money? To me, coding seems as good a choice for that as anything.

And, it's all fine and good to tell your children to invest, but I'd recommend diversified investment, not JUST rental property. Also, I'd recommend Real Estate Investment Trust investments over owning a single rental property outright. There's less risk with owning a share in a trust holding many properties, because, if you buy 100% ownership in a single property, that one property you bought may end up declining in property value if you're unlucky, even if the real estate market as a whole goes up.

As far as your policy considerations concerning the owning class, they are certainly real. In my view, the best solution to this is graduated estate taxes topping out at something like 90%. There's no social benefit to making it possible for children of rich people to do nothing other than fuck around their whole lives. Democrats like the estate tax. Republicans want to repeal it. Compromise right now is 40% maximum tax bracket with a $5,000,000+ exemption. I'd like the exemption lower and the tax higher.

Also, fuck beta.

---linuxrocks123