Re: [PLUG] VoiceNet Rumors?

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 09:05:51PM -0500, Jon Nelson wrote:
> We _WANT_ to be punishing the people who abuse the children in the first
> place!  I wish it were that easy.  Due to the inherent and global nature
> of the Internet it makes finding the abusers very difficult indeed.

I believe that it is inappropriately assumptive on your part to
place the label "abusers" on defendants in child pornography cases,
even those that have been decided by appeal. (I'm fine with your
labeling as abusers those who have been convicted by a jury.)

It isn't your place, as a law enforcement officer or as a citizen,
to decide what is and isn't offensive on an international scale.
Please try to be cognizant of that.

(It is, of course, your responsibility of as a law enforcement
officer to enforce the local, state, and national laws wrt to this
issue, and your responsbility as a citizen to obey those laws.
Please don't stop doing those things.)

On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 09:06:09PM -0500, Jon Nelson wrote:
> I find the above statement very offensive and the analogy incredulous.  It
> is more offensive to the child victims.

For whose definition of "offensive" and whose definition of
"victim"?

(I think you and I mostly agree about what offends us personally. I
refuse to contend that my personal opinion is Right, though, and it
bothers me to see you doing so.)

> The sale of alcohol under prohibition was a "victimless" crime.

I don't think that's true either. If you go looking for victims
there, you'll find them: in workers treated unfairly in the production
of alcohol, in people with the sickness of alcoholism, and in
innocent parties injured by the behavior of drunk "adults who made
decisions". I don't think these victims justify the prohibition of
alcohol, but I'm not about to pretend that they don't exist.

> Child pornography involves the sexual exploitation of children who aren't
> doing anything voluntarily.

I don't understand how you can make that statement. Who are you to
say that individuals under the age of eighteen are incapable of
mature decisions? US law *does* say this, and obligates you, as a PA
state trooper, to enfoce it. Please don't confuse US law with
Truth, not as an individual and especially not in your role as a law
enforcement officer. They aren't the same thing. Some times they're
close enough (as they probably are in the case of child pornography),
some times they're wildly separate.

Consider these absurdities: we (by which I mean "US law" for the
duration of this paragraph) will license individuals to operate
2-ton killing machines somewhere between two and four years before
we'll label them adults. We won't let them take part in deciding
who their governmental leaders will be until we've labeled them
adults. We'll grudgingly only enforce military service upon them
after we've let them vote (and labeled them adults, but it was the
voting that mattered in making the draft age 18). We'll let them
purchase tobacco at the same time. We won't let them drink alcohol
legally until three years after we've labeled them adults and
somewhere between five and seven years after we've let them operate
2-ton killing machines. We'll never let them purchase certain
intoxicating substances with arguably less dire effects (and, in
the case of, for instance, hemp plants grown for the production of
paper, agriculturally and environmentally attractive, but
economically--to the logging industry--unattractive effects) than
alcohol and tobacco, regardless of age. WHAT?!?!?

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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