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Originally Posted by smooth
In the US, we have a hodgepodge of age of consent laws. They span from 13 to 18--and it isn't hinged on liberal vs. conservative. In fact, the rural states have the lowest ages while the urban ones have the highest.
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Well, that's interesing.
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The fact that one's actions in Missouri (14) could be legal, but a felony in California (18) is about as apparant as it gets that there is no inherent immorality in the act--unless someone here is going to argue that certain states just condone "child abuse."
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Nonesense. Of course there is immorality in the act. Some states (lower case S) legislate for certain things that others do not. Most of Europe (for example) has abolished the death penalty. Why? Because we deem it "immoral" (for want of a better term). Conversely, in the US and China the number of prisoners being executed is rapidly increasing.
The simple fact that there is inconsistency in the laws relating to the offence does
not mean the action itself is moral, but that the
laws are inconsistent.
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Marxism hasn't been discredited. I don't know why you believe it is, but that's probably for another thread.
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Well, I guess it is.
What I meant is the the core political theory of Marxism has been discredited; the inevitabality of class war, the rebellion of the masses against the bourgeoisie.
Steve Padgitt (a renowned sociologist at Iowa State University) opines that "Marx argued that through a dialectic process, social evolution was directed by the result of class conflict. Marxism argues that human history is all about this conflict, a result of the strong-rich exploiting the poor-weak. From such a perspective, money is made through the exploitation of the worker. It is argued thus, that in order for a factory owner to make money, he must pay his workers less than they deserve."
This is no longer the case and, indeed, proved to be false in reality. Apart from the USSR and Cuba (where Marxist doctrine was further developed via
Das Kapital,the
Communist Manifesto and the political theories of Lenin, Trotsky, Castro and to a lesser degree Bakunin and Kropotkin) no such revolution occurred.
The "class war" is a myth. The exploitation of the proletariat as envisaged by Marx and Engels is a myth (current globalization and international macro-economic exploitation notwithstanding).
That's why I say Marx has been discredited. He was wrong in his core, fundamental hypothesis.
Now, that's not to say that a great deal of Marxist political thought is erroneous. Indeed, we see a lot of Marxist politics in the world today; mostly unbeknownst to its proponents!). But an inevitable class war? Nope...
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But in the context of this thread, I'll again point out that even within the states, sexual consent laws are so diverse and contradictory that one would be hard pressed to continue believing they reflect the value system of the citizens they constrain.
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You're sounding like Bakunin and Kropotkin (dare I say Libertarian?) here!
Surely you mean "the citizens they
protect"? Or do you really believe laws are formulated in some quasi-conspiratorial manner to 'keep the people down'?
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It's far more accurate to understand values as a reflection of the law in place--not the other way around. For example, the laws you have in your mind were in place long before you even knew they existed. Yet, you base your analysis of the "rightness" of this situation on those laws as if they reflect concrete truth (Marx would call this "reification"--discredited or not  ).
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This again is ignoring the concept of "natural justice". And also the fact that Western society has certain cultural and societal norms that have developed overtime and then been regulated into law. Or do you honestly believe that at some stage someone said "Hmmm... let's make sex with kids illegal! Why not? You know if we make that law we can change societies attitude"?
That's incorrect. Of course society evolves and standards develop. That's one part of Marx I agree with; the concept of "social evolution". But that doesn't mean that laws are the primary driver for social morality.
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The fact that the woman and the girl are lesbians is taboo enough to have been made a subtext of the story. Seemingly irrelevant points are included in the story, such as that the woman is married to another woman, that she adopted a son, & etc. and these points are carrying weight with people opposed to what happened, including people in this thread. Only recently have states even allowed same-sex relations, and not long before that they had separate clauses for minor-same sex relations. For example, even in Michigan the law used to have separate penalties for having sex with minors under 16 if the relationship was hetero yet the age of consent changed to 18 in a homosexual relationship. So while you don't see the relevance of what type of relationship this is, the law used to care and the jury members, depending on how taboo they see homosexual behavior will certainly see it as relevant. But hopefully you can understand now why I would argue that these laws are reflecting interests of particular politically legitimate groups and not the objective morality of an act. If that were the case, the legal age wouldn't shift simply because the youth changed his or her sexual preference.
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The point here smooth is that society considers the child (or "youth")
too young to make rational decisions on sexual matters. THAT'S the issue here. Not some vast Orwellian conspiracy to shape the masses opinion on moral and socio-political issues.
The law is clear (regardless in what state or State the event takes place). If the child is a minor, then it is rape. By definition, raping a child is sexual abuse. Especially if it is undertaken on a regular basis and by an authority figure. This woman is a child abuser; in law and in fact.
Mr Mephisto