Comment Re:body or the subject (Score 1) 473
Axe? What, you don't have any more gas? Get the chainsaw!
Axe? What, you don't have any more gas? Get the chainsaw!
"has actually harmed at least one person, or themselves"
Hell no. Harming yourself should always be legal. We have no right to stop people sticking blades or drugs into their bodies, any more than we have the right to stop people posting compromising pictures of themselves, or selling their bodies, or going bankrupt through stupid financial decisions, or wasting their lives and riches.
In making harming yourself (or any other consenting adult) illegal, you inherently allow a Christian government to force gays into therapy, or a Muslim government to force women who don't wish to wear the Burkha into therapy, or an Atheist government to force those who believe in god into therapy.
Does this mean that, if I were to accuse someone of having sex with a minor in TN, and to provide evidence of the sex, they would then be legally required to provide proof that the other party *wasn't* a minor?
Where exactly do you intend to draw the line with acceptable fetishes that demand medical treatment, and ones that don't?
Very simple: treatment is justified only when the person in question has actually harmed at least one person who did not consent AND there is reasonable evidence that that person cannot control the impulse to do so again.
Otherwise, you have to treat ambition as that can also be a cause of criminal behavior, especially in people in positions of authority.
Assuming that someone who my have owned images doctored to look like they showed someone sexually abusing someone else is likewise unacceptable
Read this again, more slowly this time. If it still sounds like I meant that the owning of images was unacceptable, than I apologize. What I am trying to say is that the act of assuming guilt is at least as evil as the act of abusing someone. (I would actually consider it just another form of abuse).
In alternate form,
evilness_inherent_in(Assuming guilt) >= evilness_inherent_in(actual assault).
I *also* do not believe that the mere possession of any information should ever be considered a crime. There is a valid argument for banning the *distribution* of child porn, but I am not convinced that it is possible to do so and still have free speech.
Hey, at least that time they were actually looking for drugs.
Wait, so now it's legal for pedophiles to force children to strip, as long as their looking for drugs?
Posting on Slashdot about punishing and abusing alleged pedophiles is primarily for getting aroused (or getting off). Getting aroused (or getting off) to posting on Slashdot about punishing and abusing alleged pedophiles (not convicted pedophiles, but alleged pedophiles) is just sick [...]. Legality aside, these people should receive psych treatment and be forced to avoid contact with Slashdot.
Sexually abusing people (regardless of age) is never acceptable. Assuming that someone who my have owned images doctored to look like they showed someone sexually abusing someone else is likewise unacceptable, especially since this behavior probably destroys at least as many lives as the other.
Let's get real about something: possession can be involuntary, for a number of reasons (You may not know it was child porn until after you see it for example, after all much mainstream porn advertises the teenage status of the models), and even *if* in a given case it were possible to prove 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that a person had knowingly and deliberately obtained child porn, it is then necessary to distinguish in some way between people who look at child porn in order to identify and prosecute child-porn possession cases, (into which group every pedophile with half a brain will attempt to insert themselves, for obvious reasons) and the actual criminals. (You could not make the distinction, in which case every prosecuting cop, attorney, truck driver, etc. who was in the chain of custody of the evidence would need to be charged as well).
And as for bitching about libertarian bullshit, well, anyone who can get child porn onto your property and call the police about it can end your life, because your name will be in the papers as a child-rapist long before it ever comes out at your trial that the images in question were buried under your back porch, and there's no evidence that you knew about them at all.
The NRA is not crazy. People who believe that gun rights exist to protect the ability to hunt are slightly deluded. Agree with it or no, the 2nd is about the right to use violence to defend oneself, whether that defense be against foreign invasion or tyranny. Calling gun rights about hunting is similar to suggesting that the first amendment doesn't apply to political speech.
Why doesn't the ACLU just come out and say "We're not pro gun rights, we don't believe that self defense is a right"? Oh, they did:
http://www.aclu.org/crimjustice/gen/35904res20020304.html
Really, the more relevant argument is the ideological one. The ACLU's pro-liberties stance on all other issues comes from their ideology. Their freedom-neutral stance on the second amendment is almost certainly just as ideological, it even comes from the same (modern American liberal) ideology, which is that the ability to forcibly defend oneself and ones freedoms is a right that must be ceded, that society (government) should hold a monopoly on the use of force. I don't agree, and I don't directly donate to them over that issue, but I'll still support them in individual cases around 99.9999% of the time, because they are almost always on the side of individual rights and they are usually supporting people who aren't otherwise able to support themselves.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=aclu+second+amendment
Note that their stated position is that it is not an individual right. They have taken on what they see as 4th and 1st Amendment issues in gun cases, and individual chapters (Nevada) support gun rights, but basically, the official position of the ACLU is "that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right" (From http://www.aclu.org/crimjustice/gen/35904res20020304.html)
Because the ACLU is supposed to be for *all* rights, and for *all* people. The NAACP doesn't mean that the ACLU doesn't take a position on the issue of discrimination, why should the NRA stop them from taking a position on Gun Rights?
Granted, the ACLU can and should do whatever the hell they want, they aren't accountable to me (or anyone else who isn't a member), and they certainly are intended to be an ideological organization, it just seems odd to me that they claim that the driving ideal is individual rights and freedoms and then neglect such a major one. Then again, the American Civil Liberties That Aren't Self Defense Union (ACLTASDU) would be much less catchy.
Sure, it is *possible*. On the other hand, we'll never know what more they might have made, and how much better or worse it would have been, if all that hard clever thinking had been put to some better use.
It is also *possible* for you to live a full happy life with only one kidney, and many people do, but that doesn't make it a good thing to lose a kidney, just a slightly less bad thing.
Artists are now forced to take time out of doing what they want to do.
Just like the rest of us who work for a living?
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.
