America's sex laws: unjust and ineffective(economist.com)
economist.com
America's sex laws: unjust and ineffective
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14164614&source=hptextfeature
6 comments
How did the illustrator get such an abstract-but-faithful-to-the-original illustration of goatse past the editors of The Economist?
That must qualify as a skilled bit of social hacking…
That must qualify as a skilled bit of social hacking…
I don't think every illustration involving hands pulling apart something can be described as "faithful" to the original goatse.
It's not goatse. Given the curve of the bars and the placement of the downward pointing triangle,it's a abstract of a woman's torso.
"laws" -> "politics" -> "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics"
am I the only person that finds bitching about OT more annoying than seeing actual OT stuff voted up. Its been said a million times, just flag it.
Vote me down all you want, I think it's important to say it clearly and publicly in order to communicate it.
Nice goatse illustration on the heading of the article.
If you see a goatse illustration in the heading of the article (thank you for bringing that even up, HN is read worldwide, it's dinner time somewhere all the time) then you really need help. Apologies for bringing it up again.
It appears there is some comfort for you in knowing that you at least are not alone in this. I have to wonder how long you stared at the subject of your association though in order to develop such a strong likelyhood in seeing analogies in unrelated images ?
It appears there is some comfort for you in knowing that you at least are not alone in this. I have to wonder how long you stared at the subject of your association though in order to develop such a strong likelyhood in seeing analogies in unrelated images ?
This isn't called 'unjust'.
It's caleld 'crazy', 'disgusting' and 'medieval'.
(Edit: This got dead-ed but just in case someone sees this via RSS and has no idea what I'm talking about the original article's here: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1...)
First, I find this as disgusting as you. But I’m going to take the unpopular side here and point out that, in an imperfect world, this is how things have to work.
Let me explain my point. Politicians often aren’t the brightest bulbs in the set. They are people who can convince a lot of other people to like them which makes most the equivalent of good con men. So after they’re elected they tend not to think things through and make simplistic laws like “Any adult performing any sex act on a minor is guilty” (which of course ignores the 17 year old having consensual sex with the 15 year old in high school). But there are checks on a law’s power. Cops and Judges both have discretion for this very reason. But sometimes the system fails and you get lazy cops, a lazy judge and a lazy prosecutor who all don’t care enough to do their job. Then you end up with the situation quoted in the first part of this article.
But here’s the thing: Yes, I think it’s unjust and I think the politicians, lawyer, judge, cops, etc... in this story are all deplorable fools. But the world will always have deplorable fools and only when someone’s burned by them do the rest of us realize something’s wrong so we can fix it. As the article points out the law that got this woman into trouble no longer exists because people saw the abuse and demanded it be changed.
So one person suffers but thousands of others won’t in the future. I wish that one person didn’t have to suffer but it’s inherent in a system where the primary skill of our elected officials is “likability” rather than “intelligence”
First, I find this as disgusting as you. But I’m going to take the unpopular side here and point out that, in an imperfect world, this is how things have to work.
Let me explain my point. Politicians often aren’t the brightest bulbs in the set. They are people who can convince a lot of other people to like them which makes most the equivalent of good con men. So after they’re elected they tend not to think things through and make simplistic laws like “Any adult performing any sex act on a minor is guilty” (which of course ignores the 17 year old having consensual sex with the 15 year old in high school). But there are checks on a law’s power. Cops and Judges both have discretion for this very reason. But sometimes the system fails and you get lazy cops, a lazy judge and a lazy prosecutor who all don’t care enough to do their job. Then you end up with the situation quoted in the first part of this article.
But here’s the thing: Yes, I think it’s unjust and I think the politicians, lawyer, judge, cops, etc... in this story are all deplorable fools. But the world will always have deplorable fools and only when someone’s burned by them do the rest of us realize something’s wrong so we can fix it. As the article points out the law that got this woman into trouble no longer exists because people saw the abuse and demanded it be changed.
So one person suffers but thousands of others won’t in the future. I wish that one person didn’t have to suffer but it’s inherent in a system where the primary skill of our elected officials is “likability” rather than “intelligence”
Second that. I knew the laws in the states were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad. Not that it's perfect in Northern Europe.
Isn't it?
Let's say you have someone move in next door, who is in the sex offender database. With the current laws...sure the guy may have raped a 6 year old girl. However, he could have just:
a) took a piss outside
b) had sex with his girlfriend, when he was a few months older than her.
c) had a nude picture of his kids taking a bath
d) sent his own nude picture to his girlfriend
etc