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Originally Posted by mixedmedia
If anyone can find a square inch of ground with which to dispute this rationally I'll eat my hat. That is, if I had a hat.
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You may wish to go buy one
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
If the neighbor harrasses the guy without any involvement by NG, how is she responsble for that?
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I didn't say she was responsible - i.e. liable - for the neighbor's actions, but the fact remains that the actions would not have taken place had she not run around the neighborhood telling everyone about the sex offender who may or may not be a real sex offender.
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If she introduces a couple to each other and the guy ends up beating the woman, is NG responsible in any real sense?
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Well, if she knows there's a good probability that the guy will beat the woman, and she plays matchmaker anyway, then absolutely. She may not be criminally responsible, but to start the ball rolling on a situation that you know could turn out badly is at best unethical.
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If she lets people know that a politician is moving in down the street and neighbors start protesting outside that front door, how is she responsible?
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Totally invalid point. Politicians are public figures. Part of the understanding when you become a politician is that you're going to be beset by protestors if you're at all visible. Plus, the media follows politicians around constantly - she wouldn't HAVE to tell the neighbors, it'd be on the 5:00 news.
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The point is that other people are responsible for their own actions, and NG is responsible for her own.
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Yes, and the responsible thing to do is to go find out what the guy did before going off half cocked.
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She's no more responsible for harrassment by someone else than I am for your actions.
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If you, based on shaky evidence, kickstarted my actions, you would bear at the least some moral culpability. Again, you might not be legally charged with anything, but that doesn't mean what you did was right.
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As long as she's just notifying neighbors of what's she found, she's well within her rights.
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I agree - however just because you are within your rights when you do something does not mean it's right to do it.
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As far as talking to neighbors vs. distributing flyers, one is a form of private speech and the other is a form of public speech. One is a conversation, and the other one is harrassment.
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You're grasping at straws here I'm afraid. The information vehicle doesn't matter if the end result is the same. The end result of stuffing the neighborhood's mailboxes with fliers is that everyone in the neighborhood knows that a guy on the sex offender list lives among them. The end result of privately talking to everyone in the neighborhood is that everyone in the neighborhood knows that a guy on the sex offender list lives among them. The results are the same. I frankly don't care what method she used to achieve those results - it simply doesn't matter.
No one is protesting the manner in which she communicated her shaky information, we are protesting the fact that she communicated it at all.
We protest that because she communicated that information without having enough information for anyone to make an informed conclusion. All she had to do was find out what the guy did. Raped a 6 year old? Fine, distribute flyers, go door to door, get a PA system and drive the streets repeating the message. I don't care. The guy deserves it.
But what if the scenario mentioned earlier happened? He'd just turned 18, had sex with his girlfriend who turns 18 in 2 weeks, her parents didn't like it, got him convicted of statutory rape. He's on the sex offender list but sure as hell he doesn't belong there, and nothing in that conviction would indicate that the neighbors need to be any more worried about him than with any other person that your children might come in contact with.
Running around to the neighbors exclaiming breathlessly that you have a SEX OFFENDER living RIGHT OVER THERE!!!!! would in that situation at best cause the guy undue and undeserved embarassment, and at worst could result in him being harassed or attacked. And ALL of it would be preventable if the dispenser of this information had just found out what the hell was going on before she ran around spreading partial facts.