Be careful about photographing your kids!

"Ron Hunter" wrote in message
...
NONE on those people was executed before they were 18, correct? In most
states of the US, 17 is the legal age for criminal responsibility. I
wouldn't object to changing it to 18, but then I see nothing wrong with
punishing those over 14 in the same way as others for the same crime.
If you are old enough to plan and execute a capital crime, do the time
(or take the punishment).

Yes, but if you are old enough to REALLY plan and execute a capitol crime,
then you won't get caught, so the point is moot. The ones who are caught
were obviously not old enough, (reguardless of their physical age) so they
shouldn't be executed, because to do so would be punishing them for
stupidity....This is one of the more compelling arguments (to me) against
capitol punishment.

"Ron Hunter" wrote in message
...
Yes. NOte that all the people listed were quite old enough to know what
they were doing, and each one had a hearing to determine if they were
mature enough to merit being treated as an adult.

Yes.....They might well know what they were doing when they committed the
capitol crime, but they aren't smart enough, or knowledgeable enough to
trick the people at the hearing into believing that they were too immature
to know what they were doing.....Doesn't make much sense to me........

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Ron Hunter writes:

NONE on those people was executed before they were 18, correct?

Correct, but probably only because of the long legal process. They were
all close to 18.

... I see nothing wrong with punishing those over 14
in the same way as others for the same crime.

Why over 14? Do you really want 12-year-old murderers going free?

Why 12? Do you really want 10 year old murderers going free? At some point
you are going to have to draw the line, and say that someone is just too
young to really know what he was doing. - Draw it.....And stick to it....

"Espen Stranger Seland" wrote in message
...
15. Oct 2003 16.16 -- Mxsmanic:
Ron Hunter writes:

NONE on those people was executed before they were 18, correct?

Correct, but probably only because of the long legal process. They were
all close to 18.

... I see nothing wrong with punishing those over 14
in the same way as others for the same crime.

Why over 14? Do you really want 12-year-old murderers going free?

(What about the executioners? They're murders too.)

The real problem isn't age, it's that death penality still exist in the
USA in the 2000s.

Yes......We bitch about putting capitol criminals away for life, but our
jails are full of marijauna smokers, and over 40 people on death row have
been exonerated by DNA evidence.....I wonder how many more poor innocent
souls are going to be executed because the DNA either didn't exist, or the
police destroyed it.....Or what other evidentury tools will be discovered
after the fact, when it is too late to save the innocent....Now we are
convicting people of rape without any real evidence at all....Just on the
say so of some spurned woman.......Or someone trying to make a name for
herself......We are a whole nation of sexaphobics.......

"Ron Hunter" wrote in message
...
Mxsmanic wrote:

Ron Hunter writes:


NONE on those people was executed before they were 18, correct?


Correct, but probably only because of the long legal process. They were
all close to 18.


... I see nothing wrong with punishing those over 14
in the same way as others for the same crime.


Why over 14? Do you really want 12-year-old murderers going free?


No, but we have to determine where it becomes a crime of profit. It is
rather unusual for someone under 14 to kill someone for gain. Note that
it is VERY rare for someone to be sentenced to death unless the crime
is one that promotes some kind of gain for the murderer. Those cases
where multiple murders, or murders with outrageous violence, are usually
committed by people who are insane, but not legally insane. The others
are usually for some kind of gain.

Those younger than 14 would at least be locked up for 7 years, then if
they are deemed still a danger to society, they could be sent to an
adult prison.
In most cases, 12 year old murderers DO go free under out system.

Reminds me of, "The Bad Seed"....A play on Broadway wherin a 10 year old
girl pushes the old lady upstairs down the stairs to her death because she
told the 10 year old that she would give her, "My canary when I die." When
her mother told her that poor Mrs. xxx fell down the stairs and died, the
little girl said, "Can I have the canary now?"

"otzi" wrote in message
u...
Not so long
ago nudity was normal. Its only been the last 100 years or so that
conservatism is oh! so fashionable......

But the way things used to be is conservatism by definition....What has
happened in the last 100 years is, "liberalism"......I am conservative, and
I have nothing against nudity....Perhaps you really mean, "Religious
fanaticism"?

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
William Graham writes:

... how do you guys feel about child pornagraphy where there
are no victoms....No children being photographed....All the images are
constructed digitally....Should it be illegal to manufacture it, posses
it,
or both?

No. If no children have been harmed, there is no reason to restrict it,
and the First Amendment (in the United States) protects it with freedom
of speech. The fact that some people might not care for that type of
speech is irrelevant.

There has been some progress in this direction with decisions regarding
"virtual porn," but there is still much room for improvement.

Yes....If Stephan Speilberg can film a bunch of realistic Allosauruses
running across the plains, he would have no trouble filming child
pornography without using real children.........

"Alan Browne" "Alan wrote in message
...


Mxsmanic wrote:

William Graham writes:


No. If no children have been harmed, there is no reason to restrict it,
and the First Amendment (in the United States) protects it with freedom
of speech. The fact that some people might not care for that type of
speech is irrelevant.

There has been some progress in this direction with decisions regarding
"virtual porn," but there is still much room for improvement.


I've read claims of the likelyhood that 40% of kiddie-porn users
eventually 'have to have the real thing'.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/we...oct2003-26.htm

The 'virtual reality edition' of such kiddie-porn will not prevent that.
So while allowing it might respect the free speech parts of various
countries constitutions', it would remain morally reprehensible to allow
it, and likely dangerous for children, whether the number is 40% or 4%.

Tell me that is "irrelevant".

If the constitution of any country places free speech of that nature
above the well being of children, then there lies a constituion worth
spitting on.

The problem is deciding what part of freedom should be restricted before the
fact on the chance that some percentage of the perverts in the population
will be triggered to committ crimes as a result of it. - Also, who are we to
appoint to make these decisions for us? There are some men who are turned on
by womens shoes....Should we make all women go barefoot in order to prevent
one of these from committing some irresponsible sex act over so many
shoes? - An extreme example, perhaps, but you should get the idea.....Again,
where do you draw the line? I wonder what percentage of kiddie porn users
would have to have the real thing even if there were no kiddie porn
available anywhere in the society......A statistic that is unavailable to
us, unfortunately....Or, perhaps fortunately, depending on what freedoms you
would restrict because of it.....One of the chief freedoms we enjoy here in
the US is the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven.....Anyone,
including child molesters, must committ the crime before they have to do the
time......I, for one, hope that that never changes.

"Gregory W. Blank" wrote in message
...
In article dX4jb.774182$Ho3.206542@sccrnsc03,
"William Graham" wrote:

Just as is the typically liberal concept that we shouldn't have a fourth
amendment guarantee against unreasonable search and seisure.....If you
haven't committed any crime, then why would you care? Yes....George
Orwell
was a visionary allright........

So what advocate that people can do anything they want in the privacy
of thier own home ehh? Might reconsider that if you were living next to
Jeffrey Daumer.

Even in Dahmer's case, the police had to have a good excuse before they
searched his place and found heads and other body parts in his
refridgerator.....Would you really want to live in a society where the
police could come into your kitchen at any time of the day or night and look
in your refridgerator? - You wouldn't if you'd ever seen the inside of my
reefer, that's for sure........

otzi wrote:

What a long and interesting thread. Covered every thing just-a-bout, from
sunrise to sunrise. But as so often happens good folk view the world from
their own perspective, not so much from ignorance or stupidity but more
from a narrow view shaped from limited life's experiences and an
introspective society. (read frightened.) I am generalising here.

If folk were not to judge all things from their own miniscule life's
experience but view from rather a broader perspective a more balanced
outlook would evolve. Man has been kicking dust for thousands of years,
bright men/women have been recorded for hundreds, yet so many folk view
the past few years as being all definitive.

The subject of this post, photographing kids is relevant but any resolving
answer is bound to be thwarted by the writers own perspective. Not so
long
ago nudity was normal. Its only been the last 100 years or so that
conservatism is oh! so fashionable. Today folks have never had it so good
yet their insecurities abound. As for big brother there is even a TV spot
satirising the Orwellian experience. To me it's quite frightening the way
some (so confident) mortals see the need to suppress their fellow man
while believing themselves to be right.

Otzi

Aha, a post with some substance!

There are very good reasons why sex is such a hot topic, especially in this
era. Well, if there weren't, why would it be so... duhhh... Oops, an
inconvenient question!!! That implies that there may be aspects of this
subject about which most of us haven't a clue. And that means this thread
is a discussion of a subject that is likely very poorly understood, if
understood at all. At the risk of appearing to be a bore, maybe the
subject (human sexuality) is worth an extended commentary.

First of all, sex is the action with the single greatest imperative:
reproduce or let your genes die out. That imperative is greater than that
of survival of the individual, and for life in general, survival is the
prime purpose. All of which means that sex is a powerful subject, capable
of creating an unexpectedly broad diversity of consequences.

It can be fairly said that sex itself has proven to be a hot potato
unmanageable by any but the most profound human institutions. The only
ones that are able to do so are those that possess a monopoly of very
serious worth; religion, for one, qualifies because it deals with the
otherwise imponderable, such as death and the consequences thereof.
Governments are only one of several types of institutions that continuously
attempt, or threaten to attempt, that kind of activity, and without
success. More able than government is social pressure, the considerations
of peers, and even that cannot achieve a robust management.

What happens most often is that there gets to be a default treatment of sex,
which usually means that it's not treated with at all, but allowed to
proceed unabated in private where others have no access. Except when
religion and government coincide in the establishment of the parameters of
peer consideration and review. Unfortunately, the US has that direct
heritage, in that the New England societies were of that nature, and there
remains enough of that heritage active today for it to be able to
continually regenerate itself. Elsewhere, except for pockets of social
abnormality, that kind of pressure either doesn't exist or cannot manage to
get enough of a foothold to thrive.

If left unmanaged, social sexuality acquires an expectedly profound place in
social structures; that is, within the boundaries, whatever they may be,
that define a functional society, there arises a complex of traditions with
which each generation is permitted to discover their individual and
collective sexuality. Such traditions survive to the extent they prove
functionally useful and are coherent with the general social fabric. In
such cases, the discovery of sexuality takes place via a complex of
rituals, such as are generally deemed by the discoverers to be the only
route thereto.

A cursory overview of the global history of mankind supports this. What is
surprising is that there is such a rich variety of differences in details,
even though the general structures are the same: somehow let the kids
manage to get through that discovery and growth phase without killing each
other (or the rest of us), such that they can reliably achieve responsible
adulthood. It's worth observing that the nature of these rituals in any
given society provide real insight into the essence of the society itself,
and so is worth study, even if only for that reason.

But there are other parameters of human sexuality that remain dynamic and
untractable to general resolution. In the main, that has to do with
heritage, the perpetration of a genetic lineage. And that is largely
hardwired in the animal body. Which is the source of a huge amount of
human suffering. Consider, for one of a number of issues: the male of the
species has an agenda with regard other offspring than that of the
individual.

One of the ways that manifests is in the commonly observed molestation of
female young by male adults other than the father. Computation: she's a
child-bearer that doesn't carry my genes, so she's fair game; and that
computation takes place quite beneath the normal level of consciousness,
which for more than a few males who have a difficult time handling their
consciousness itself, becomes a problem greater than they can manage.

Alpha males routinely kill the young of their predecessors, even among the
primates. And we'uns are primates. In spite of western civilization's
heroic efforts to establish the contrary, this remains the case. Which
means we're stuck with the problem, like it or not.

Well, I could wear my fingers out with examples, but what's the point? Just
this: we think we're so smart, and yet we hold forth about subjects and
issues about which we know virtually nothing, discussing aspects and
ramifications with seeming knowledgeability that few people (apparently)
actually comprehend, much less understand.

Better would be to realize that we're barking up a tree, the identity of
which we are not aware (it could be poisonous, especially to those who come
and bark!!!). Even better would be to accept that we don't really know
whereof we speak, admit the fact, and give thought to investigating these
matters.

Best would be to recognize that our only remaining survival skillset has to
do with our capacity for mentation, and accept that we have to use that
capacity honestly and genuinely for it to be of any use to us. Wouldn't
take any time at all to realize that we are conceptually creative animals,
but animals nonetheless, and that acceptance of all that we are is the
first step to understanding and control thereof. Self-mastery? Nahh...
journeyman status is quite good enough, because it recognizes there are
gains and growths potentially at hand, and that we are not well advised to
relax our vigil of our own nature, lest that relaxation lead us into
danger.

When we get to the point where we can knowledgeably discuss these issues,
perhaps discussions could be expected to prove fruitful. Otherwise,
threads like this can only be venues for social chest-thumping (I'm more
liberal/conservative/righteous/adventurous/etc/etc/etc than the rest of you
guys). And the sad result is that there becomes one more nail in the
coffin of any hope for rationality with regard one of mankind's most
important issues.

Which is why I've nothing to say about the issues raised here, only about
how and why they are being treated.

Ummm... rain's stopped... sun's just peaking out... cameras are loaded...
I'm gone!

Bill Tallman