Dude You Have Sex with Children!!

Scott Horowitz | August 4, 2006
So, this guy thinks what he did was right, he took advantage of autistic and mentally retarded children.

One Sick Fuck!!

I think this guy should be gang raped by every convict in the prison, who's with me?

Aaron Shurtleff | August 4, 2006
I think he should be violated by every cactus in the desert!

This guy is wrong on so many levels, and if there actually is a religion that says this is OK, then that's even worse. Nice topic for a lunch break! :P

Kris Weberg | August 4, 2006
Two points:

1) Disturbingly, the idea that you shouldn't sexually engage with people below a certain age is fairly modern. The Greeks really did believe that a a tutor should receive sexual favors from the children he was teaching, though there were stipulations to prevent things like beatings and so forth. And going by the Bible and the Quran, it seems as if marrying girls at ridiculously young ages was widely accepted among pretty much every Abrahamic religion at one point or another in history. Likewise, a cursory examination of historical records related to both royalty and peasantry in most parts of the world suggests that marrying someone who could bear children, no matter how young, was standard practice. Considering that some girls reach menarche at ages below twelve, historians argue that great deal of what we'd call pedophilia was going on in that time period.

That said, the ancients didn't know what we know about a child's physical, emotional, and intellectual development, nor did they have thje idea of rational consent that we have. The idea that children are very different from adults doesn't really pop up as a socially organizing and legal theory until the 19th century. (Remember, people saw nothing wrong with child labor, or with holding a child to the standards of conduct expected of adults until fairly recently.) Claiming that an ancient practice performed in nondemocratic societies under conditions of what we'd term scientific ignorance should be normative in a modern, humanistic country does not absolve this man of his criminal and horrifically unethical actions. It amounts to the abuse of historiography and ultimately to a sophistical defense of what I would term, with restraint, a sociopathic disregard for basic ethical standards of consent and the use of power. Luckily, our legal system doesn't recognize this sort of defense, operating as it does with a concept of mens rea or motive in which a defendant's rationalizations of a criminal act don't matter one whit so long as the recognizeable intent to commit the act existed.

2) All that said, I have no desire to see this person raped by man, beast, or vegetable. (I'm ambivalent where fungi are concerned.) Harming him will neither repair what he has done nor will it dissuade those of his ilk; were they capable of being swayed by concerns about pain and suffering, they would hardly inflict it on their victims, and were they responsive to social censure and punishment, they would hardly be proudly admitting to their actions and advocating their normalization by political means. No, a person like this should be locked away, fed three meals a day, and otherwise maintained so that he cannot ever harm anyone else. My (unpopular) belief is that social justice protects the innocent first and foremost, repairs what harm to victims is reperable, and beyond that operates to restrain or limit the harm of criminality as much as possible without crossing over into the realms of state-authorized killing in non-defensive capacities. This isn't how out legal system works, of course, but I'd argue that it's the way things ought to work. Anger, even when it is wholly justifiable to express it as in this case, cannot be the practical basis of a workable system of justice, nor can vengeance.

John E Gunter | August 4, 2006
It would be nice if we were to be able to take those individuals who were locked away as you state Kris, and have them do some sort of work while they're locked away, that would benefit society. In other words, some way for them to produce a product or service that would be sold and the profits from that sale going to their victims. At least that way, they would become productive members of society.

But also as you say Kris, that's now how our system works.

Jackie Mason | August 4, 2006
[hidden by request]

Jackie Mason | August 5, 2006
[hidden by request]

Scott Horowitz | August 5, 2006
Yeah, I saw that too and found it amusing Jackie. Well, I'm not a pedophile, I don't look like a 40 year old black guy who looks white now.

Scott Hardie | August 7, 2006
When I saw the title of this discussion, I thought it was the next Ashton Kutcher movie title. No, really: I participated in a recent conversation on the subject of societal taboos, and how the FCC may still police the mainstream but alternative comedy will joke about seemingly anything these days, and there's virtually no societal taboo left. My first thought was, making fun of innocent civilians who are not public figures is still protected, but then the obvious dawned on me, pedophilia. We joke about Michael Jackson raping kids because he's a cartoon character who takes himself seriously, but sick freaks like the one in this article are beyond society's compassion, understanding, or sense of humor. The question is, for how long? The trend in this country is towards the purity of childhood, Kris is right, but it's also towards crediting children with intelligence and trusting them to be wise to their own needs, through legal sea changes like child emancipation. What if this guy wasn't raping the mentally challenged but instead a legally-emancipated teenager who made a coherent and (more importantly) emotionally moving argument in court that he should be free to have sex with this guy? I don't think their case would win, but it would be taken seriously, and Jon Macks would have to work his magic about it for Jay Leno because the dam would have begun to burst.

...Sorry this is all over the place; I'm sleepy. Any other rock-solid taboos you can't even joke about?

Scott Horowitz | August 7, 2006
Just FYI, the name of this discussion is from the NAMBLA episode of South Park

Kris Weberg | August 7, 2006
Actually, I'd argue that there are pedophilia jokes here and there, mostly in the form anti-clerical humor. I can even think of a few movies with jokes about necrophilia -- the first Men in Black, for example (it's subtly done, but it's there).

I will say that I haven't seen any jokes, outside of South Park, the great taboo-breaker, regarding genocide; and no one I can think of makes jokes about, say, child soldiers, honor killings, or female genital mutilation.

Well, no one until the 2014 release of National Lampoon's Sudanese Vacation, anyway.

Amy Austin | August 7, 2006
Well, no one until the 2014 release of National Lampoon's Sudanese Vacation, anyway.

hehehe... good one, Kris.

Scott Hardie | August 19, 2006
The world is full of sick fucks: (link)