Mary Ruwart opines that the current age of consent / child porn enforcement regime does not do a good job of protecting children from abuse and exploitation.

Bob Barr opines that the state government of Georgia not only can, but MUST, distribute child pornography on demand.

I’m not big on the whole “cosmotarian beltway neocon smearbund” thing, but you dropped the ball big-time on this one, Radley.

If you have the time to spare, you might be interested in Samuel Konkin’s writing on the LP. If you want, shoot me an e-mail at oblivion437 at hotmail dot com and I’ll hunt down the particular piece I have in mind. Needless to say, Mr. Konkin saw all of this that’s happening, decades ago.

That’s always a rough deal. Even under the best of circumstances a rape case is tough to prosecute…when you get into acquaintances, family and past events like this, it can be almost impossible to get a conviction, so I can kind of see why the county prosecutor is reluctant. That’s the biggest reason that I don’t think the contractual solutions that someone proposed on the other thread would ever work…pedophiles are very skilled at covering their tracks and hiding evidence with the people they abuse. They usually have to be in order to get close to their victims to begin with, particularly in family situations, so putting together some kind of complex contract system where somebody could “consent” to sex as a minor but can reverse themselves down the road seems like an open invitation for abuse because it would be just about impossible to prosecute if an actual victim of sexual abuse whose consent wasn’t real did come forward. That’s why I think the state age of consent laws, imperfect as they are, are probably the best tool to dealing with pedophiles…somebody outside of the pedophile and his victims has to set a limit, even if the laws that set those limits aren’t going to be perfectly suited to every conceivable situation.

Like I said on the other thread, no easy answers, I guess.

Again, best of luck to you and your family with this.

Best of luck with the county prosecutor. Is his failure to prosecute based primarily on a lack of physical evidence?

Redtail’s comments make me sick and I want to thank UCrawford and Andrew and Jet for expressing what I haven’t the words for.

Stories like what happened to your family are exactly why I have so little respect for anyone who pushes pedophilia and coerced as legitimate lifestyle choices.

I’m sorry to hear that the cops haven’t prosecuted him, but I’m glad to hear that your sister had the courage to turn him in and I hope it helps her with her recovery.

A fair point, David. I personally don’t care about the LP as such, since I’m a non-voter. But to your point, what agenda is the LP really advancing if it’s running a fairly prominent ex-Republican who has done little to atone for his past anti-libertarian stances aside from simply saying, “I’m a libertarian.”

It seems to me that Barr ‘08 is just a repeat of Paul ‘88: A Republican out of favor with the party establishment using the LP to rebuild his own personal political base. That’s not to say Ruwart would be a better nominee–or even that she’s not a “nutjob”–but I don’t see how to advance even a quasi-libertarian agenda with Bob Barr.

Perhaps your argument should be, “the purpose of a political party is to win votes and elections.” Barr probably will get more votes then any other LP candidate available. Whether that translates into an advance for libertarianism remains to be seen, though I’m skeptical.

That’s quite an assumption. I tend to have the same metaphor in my head. Perhaps it’s because, within the last year, I learned that my step-father had abused his second wife’s teenage daughter. He claimed consent. The daughter said that yes, there had been “consent” of the “Let me do this or I’m going to tell your mother what a little slut you are and if you ever talk about this I’m going to do something truly nasty to you AND your mother.” The mother divorced him when she found out. Shortly after the divorce, he began dating another woman with a young teenage daughter. That relationship lasted for about two years, until the daughter had a breakdown and the truth came out. He then married my mother who had…you guessed it, a 14 year old daughter. Within 3 months of the marriage, this “minor attracted adult” began abusing my sister, offering the same kind of threats in order to gain “consent”.

Until my sister grasped her bravery by the balls, this “minor attracted adult” had never been arrested, nor even officially investigated. He STILL hasn’t been charged with anything, despite the fact that my sister did report the assaults to the police. He may very well have ruined, or at the very least severely damaged, 3 lives (perhaps 6, if you count the mothers, who have to deal with the fact that this was going on right under their noses and they didn’t know).

Does this sound like metaphor or media spin? Or does this “minor attracted adult” sound more like a cold, calculating monster? Who, by the way, justified all of these attacks with “It’s was OK because they weren’t related to me by blood, so it’s not incest”.

“Minor attracted adult”…*puke*…

I completely agree.

Well put. I was aware that you weren’t suggesting that I was excusing their actions. I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t. No matter how horrible one’s childhood, you have to make the best adjustment you can in adulthood to live in society. I’ve seen too many people–including myself, unfortunately–use their crappy childhoods as excuses for crappy behavior.

Radley, are you too dense to realize why some “beltway libertarians” are really criticized? Rockwell is a down the line libertarian anarchist. The criticism of some “beltway libertarians” is that some think libertarianism means that one has to actively support drug use, gay sex, porn movies, and abortion and condemn racism, and that opposing the initiation of force is a minor side issue. There is no libertarian position on gay sex other than it should be legal and there is no libertarian position on racism either. Neither is there a libertarian position on whether God exists or whether one should eat meat. Libertarianism is a political philosophy.

Skip, I guess the question is whether the LP is a social organization, a cult, or a political party. Assuming it’s the last of those (I think that’s what the “P” is supposed to signify), then “Meh” is a pretty strange response. The purpose of a political party is to advance an agenda, no?

One last point on this remark…

If you were brought up in a community/family where molestation was OK–or at least not punished–how long do you think it would take you to shake off that early imprinting? Some do, after years or decades of hard work. Some don’t. Some can’t.

Assuming you’re not talking about a situation where somebody is a paranoid schizophrenic or in a mental state where they’re having some sort of psychotic break from reality people always have final say over their own sexual behavior (assuming they’re not the victim, of course). When a pedophile is attracted to children, that’s not something he necessarily has control over…how he chooses to act on it is. It’s like being married and tempted to cheat, or being attracted to someone at work when it’s a bad idea to get involved…you usually don’t have a lot of control over what tempts you, but you do have control over how you choose to handle those temptations. And when it comes to a temptation to take liberties with someone who won’t or can’t consent, that’s when you should seek help because choosing to act on those particular temptations is not acceptable or excusable and should rightfully carry harsh penalties.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t trying to accuse you of excusing their actions and my response to you wasn’t meant to attack you personally…I was just arguing the point that prior abuse to a criminal does not in any way justify their criminal activities. I can see where you’re coming from about sentencing, as extenuating circumstances do factor in regarding severity of punishment, but a pedophile who attacks a child should always be held accountable, regardless of how crappy their upbringing was. Like I said, it wasn’t the victim’s fault that his attacker was molested as a child…the victim doesn’t deserve to bear the consequences of it. Sometimes that point gets missed as well in the debate, and that should never happen.

If you were brought up in a community/family where molestation was OK–or at least not punished–how long do you think it would take you to shake off that early imprinting? Some do, after years or decades of hard work. Some don’t. Some can’t.

I agree with you on this…sexual abuse is usually a cycle, which is why I believe in disrupting the cycle by holding offenders accountable. Will that get rid of all sexual abuse? Of course not. But it will limit the number of victims an offender can reach…and that’s a start.

My benchmark for this issue is the movie “M.” People in the movie come to sympathize with and understand M. That doesn’t stop them from making appropriate sentencing recommendations.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I sympathize with people who’ve suffered from sexual abuse themselves. I just don’t accept it as any sort of justification for them to commit sexual abuse on others in the future.

I wasn’t excusing their actions. I was expressing sympathy. In legal terms, that would translate best IMO as extenuating circumstances which *must* be taken into consideration upon sentencing.

If you were brought up in a community/family where molestation was OK–or at least not punished–how long do you think it would take you to shake off that early imprinting? Some do, after years or decades of hard work. Some don’t. Some can’t.

My benchmark for this issue is the movie “M.” People in the movie come to sympathize with and understand M. That doesn’t stop them from making appropriate sentencing recommendations.