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Federal Appeals Court Says Sex Offender's Computer Ban Unfair
crimeandpunishment writes "A federal appeals court says a 30-year computer restriction for a convicted sex offender was too stiff a punishment. The man, who was caught in an Internet sex sting, had been ordered not to own or even use a computer." The D.C. Circuit Court's opinion in the case against Mark Wayne Russell is available as a PDF; slightly longer coverage from the Courthouse News Service.
Why not just cut off his balls?
Given the increasing amount of professions that require the use of a computer, it would make more sense to monitor.
assuming he *is* guilty, he knows about "stiff punishments"... :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Will hackers also be able to get computers back as well? as some of them have been banned as well.
Yikes, even TFA says "too stiff", not just the summary.
As much as I want to see guilty people get punished, things like this that are a de facto sort of life sentence (even after release from jail) don't make sense either.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Are computers now so ubiquitous, and potentially so broadly defined, that they're a necessity? Is an Android phone a computer? What about your Tivo? Is banning someone from a computer restraint of trade these days?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Pedophiles who contact their victims over phone aren't banned from ever using a phone, yet apparently some judge thought it would be a good idea to prevent a system engineer of 10 years (from the article) from using a computer. A three judge panel concluded that "it is often necessary to use a computer to apply for a job, including at McDonald's and PETCO."
Why the heck do we have judges who are so out of touch with reality making these sorts of mistakes? If the guy can't use a computer and really wanted to meet kids online, what's to stop him from getting an iPhone or a Blackberry? Justice isn't about revenge, it's about upholding the law and meting out punishment and forcing rehabilitation onto perpetrators. Along the way it became about taking someone off the streets for a time while teaching them the best way to commit crimes and not get called. (It's called jail). And now, we've moved onto some judges literally telling criminals that even when they're not in jail, they can't be a part of modern society at all? [sarcasm] That'll work really well to keep pedos from kids [/sarcasm]
Signatures are the new names.
Sex offenders should be locked up permanently or executed. End of story. There is no "strict" punishment for anyone that brings harm to kids. Won't someone please think of the children?
I'm pretty sure that there was some ruling in a lesser court that basically said that the internet is a right, not a privilege. At least, that's what the language was alluding too, and even talking in the media that way. But of course when you commit a crime you loose all your rights, right? Nope, you serve time and then get them back either fully or under some form of monitoring, such as having to check in with a parole officer or participating in group sessions. we always seem to want to especially crucify pedophiles when all they really are is another form of criminal. They don't even get a decent break in jail for crying out loud.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Unlike receiving a DUI conviction and losing your license, while you are at the helm of your computer you do not risk careening into the other lane and killing a bus full of people. The computer is just a utility, not the vector.
The computer doesn't do the molesting, molester's do the molesting. The computer is one utility of many. If we start piecemeal restricting people from the things that could be used to aid in causing harm, what will we have left? Typical America, treating the symptoms, not the problems.
Props to the appeals court for finally realizing this stupidity.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
That guys whose middle name is Wayne are evil.
examples: John Wayne Gacy, Osama Wayne Bin Laden, O.J. Wayne Simpson, the list goes on.
OK, no computers? So, No iphone? No Crackberry? No emergency transpoder in his car? No calculator? No video camera? No Digital Audio Converter? WTF?
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
death, obviously
It should be possible to redirect all this the anger and popular hatred from pedophiles to sociopaths, and eventually ban them from positions of power as a far greater danger to other people than pedophiles. I don't care how "oppressive" or "undemocratic" the government will have to become to achieve this -- it will be still far superior to the current condition when positions of control, be it in government, business religious organizations, media or organized crime, inevitably end up being occupied by them.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The guy set out to methodically groom what he thought was a 13 year old girl for sex. If you think a 30 year computer ban is too harsh, then fine, let's just throw him back in jail instead. Happy now?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What about cars?
Your modern car probably has the equivalent processing power of a 486 in it.
I predict we see a surge in the buyers market for Model T's.
Doubt it. A hacker's crime essentially requires the use of a computer. They couldn't commit it without one. A sex offender COULD potentially use a computer for nefarious ends, but his/her crime likely goes well beyond a computer. Big difference.
The verdict seems like one step towards common sense. Releasing artificially "impaired" individuals into society fails to promote the general welfare. If he can't use a computer, that causes more problems than it solves for the rest of us.
A bigger step towards common sense would be not releasing, true, hardcore sex offendors back into the general population. "Life in prison" should mean LIFE IN PRISON, for say, a violent rapist.
The final step towards common sense would be decriminilizing the mere posession of certain pornography. As it stands, it's way too easy to frame somebody for mere posession, and you don't get to the actual source of the problem that way.
I'm not holding my breath on real common sense when it comes to this part of the law. ZOMG! Children! Quick, burn stuff and behave irrationally and against your own best interest!!! If you don't you must be a witch^H^H^H^H^H pedo yourself.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If you beat someone up with a bat, wouldnt it be silly if a court ordered you to stay away from baseball games, sporting good stores, and ban you from every owning a bat again?
The guy tried to turn a 13 year old girl into his personal whore and banning in from using the computer is 'unfair' ...
WHAT
THE
FUCK
is wrong with this world?
Unfair would be cutting his balls off and raping him with a broom handle until he could taste splinters only to find out that he didn't do it.
There is nothing 'unfair' you can do to him. Nothing.
What if it was your daughter? Your wife? Your son? You'd still think it was 'unfair' to ban him from a computer? Seriously?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
First off, there is the pretty much proven idea that people that find children as acceptable sex partners (willingly or unwillingly) aren't going to change. Period. Nothing that we know of today will change this.
The current thinking seems to be that if a child is an acceptable sex partner and they are incapable of providing informed consent that there is no difference between someone that "seduces" a child and one that conks the child over the head, drags them into the bushes and rapes them. Probably kills the child immediately afterword. Whether or not that is true or not doesn't seem to be up for debate right now - it is just assumed as an established fact. This does have some grounding in reality.
The problem with child porn is pretty clear. If it makes children appear as a valid sex partners, well then, they are valid sex partners. Then the above paragraph comes into play - there are no "willing" child sex partners so every act is rape and every rape is violent, potentially leading to murder as well.
The conclusion is that anyone finding children are attractive as sex partners is one small step away from killing the next child they see. This is probably a bit far fetched, but is certainly where current thinking is today, especially in the legal system in a lot of countries.
So what exactly does one do with someone that has been convicted of finding a child an acceptable sex partner? Obviously, they are just one small step away from raping and killing children. While perhaps not a 100% valid conclusion, you can see where the thinking is on this and it is pretty tough to escape the logical progression.
At some point in the future there may be a way to tell the difference between someone that has no problem having sex with a consenting 16-year-old girl and someone that is all set to rape and murder. We aren't there yet. Right now, keeping these people in prison for eternity isn't a realistic solution in most Western countries - why should they be kept at State expense? Releasing them with restrictions on movement, contact with children and other things seems to be pretty logical. Restrictions on using a computer (or at least use of the Internet) seems to make some sense - again, based on the idea that anyone finding a child as an acceptable sex partner is one small step away from raping and murdering children.
The problem with the usual law enforcement methodolgy (you know, commit the crime, do the time, repeat as needed) is the whole part about it being (a) predicable that these people will re-offend and (b) having to tell the parent of the dead child that it was known about. People are pretty sensitive about that - I guess it has to do with the cost of raising a child these days. You know, all that money for nothing when the kid is murdered.
The main problem would seem to be separating the "murdering, raping" offenders from the "teen sex" offenders. We are't doing a good job of that today and there doesn't seem to be a good reliable test for it. And nobody, but nobody, wants to be the one telling the parent that the convicted child sex enthusiast just killed their child.
Assuming you aren't just woefully misinformed on the definition of "sociopath", as most people apparently are...
If you think it's even possible to have a society that requires shared, collective resources and people in positions of power in order to manage them, and then to somehow collectively vet and judge those leaders in order to weed out the "sociopaths" before they reach positions of authority, then you don't actually live in reality. The fact that you suggest oppressive and undemocratic government as a means to this end is just downright hilarious.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
One of the main reasons that a vehicle restriction is allowed is that there are alternatives; taxi, bus, bicycle, walk etc. What are the alternatives to computers? With a computer ban there is no possibility of any white collar job. Find one where you do not have to at lest read email.
Even finding a job at all would be a problem. The first thing an employment agency does is point one toward a computer and say "Do a job search". How many initial interviews include computer based testing? Many blue collar jobs require one to use a computer for time sheet entry.
By restricting a someone's employment opportunity severely there is only one means of survival; crime. Se we take a paedophile and push him towards a life of further crime. That is not rehabilitation.
I'd be more than happy if he spent more time in jail.
In fact, I'd be happy to have him executed.
To use a soccer/football analogy, some crimes are "red card" offenses.
Once committed, you lose the right to ever be in society again. No parole.
It's not much of a guess to consider that the parole board will be depending on a lot of ex-prisoners to have computer access in thirty years time. Judgements like this may end up being impediments to criminal justice.
Then again, the Judge may have considered that and assumed someone else can revise the judgement later if necessary.
If you're going to RTFA, read the actual opinion. It's in Jurisprech (a dialect of legalese), but if you can wade through it it's actually quite enlightening as to not only how sentencing works in this country (it is both more and less arbitrary and subjective than most people believe), but also to the work judges do in balancing competing needs. It's actually a pretty good read, and at 22 pages (with lots of whitespace and a rigid formatting convention that most C programmers would envy, opinions are not typographically dense) not even all that long... especially given that there are 2 concurring opinions and a thorough introduction.
Oddly enough, the judiciary, who are without a doubt the most lawyerish branch of government, also tend to write the most readable laws (and yes, their opinions ARE law... that's neither un-Constitutional nor new).
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
All the conservatives screaming about judge-made law forget before the late 19th century pretty much all law was based on common law which was created by judges by centuries of judicial precedent. The bill of rights was basically codification of common law precedents.
This doesn't bode well for the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with its 3 strikes and no more internet rule.
If he isn't allowed to own or use a computer - ever - does that mean he can't own, drive, or even ride in, a car from the last 25 years? Is he allowed to use an ATM or can he only bank in person, at a physical bank? Is he allowed to ride in an elevator, or does he have to take the stairs everywhere for the rest of his life?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I am of the opinion that if you restrict someone to a life of poverty--punishing them in a way that guarantees that they can't get virtually any straight job--you will create a lifetime criminal. We need to have a solid system of re-entry after someone has paid their debt to society, and do as much as we can to help them become productive people.
Think about who is paying the cost of making sure someone a criminal for life...that's gotta hurt the tax wallet.
I do not understand what the judge was thinking? Was he up for re-election and trying to make himself look good?
Perhaps it would be better not to sentence innocent people in the first place. It's pretty hard to argue about punishments as long as you can't even trust the system with that.
Ok, you invent the technique that only allows the conviction of guilty parties. The only one that currently exists is to have no law, therefore no guilt and no convictions. Total anarchy sounds like a pretty bad idea to me.
That doesn't mean that our system is perfect, or even that it doesn't have a few major problems. It will always have some innocent people punished for crimes they didn't commit. It will take a truly significant "advancement" to change that. (some of those possible advancements would make Orwell cringe.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
30 years is actually an extreme version of a very common form of "things that are quite clearly permanent". If someone innocent spends 6 months in jail, it is just as permanent, equally unjust, only less damaging. They will never regain that time.
Similarly, someone who spends untold hours over several years fighting off a frivolous lawsuit (and earning the money to pay the lawyer's fees) has permanently lost time from their lives that they will never get back. It doesn't take criminal law to cause irreparable damage. Civil law does so regularly. (just less spectacularly)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
"All this research comes with important caveats, most significantly that official recidivism rates in sex crimes are likely to be artificially low because a significant number of offenses are believed by experts to go unreported."
The recent, and not so recent, scandals in the Catholic Church show that these crimes are very often unreported (at least for many years), even when the children have turned to parents or other authority figures for help.
And the following does not seem to support your contention (c), because there is no reference to knowing or not knowing the boys in this particular statement, (as is stated elsewhere in the article). Perhaps that is an oversight, or perhaps not. The wording is unclear, and so the statistic is questionable:
"Studies that tracked groups of sex offenders over their lifetimes found that 52 percent of diagnosed pedophiles who molested boys committed another sex crime ..."
Also the article refered to 5 and 10 year periods for the larger study. To be conclusive we would need to have more 50-year long large studies, or longer, as in the one referenced that seems to indicate 50% recidivism for pedophiles who molest boys.
I also do not see support for your contention that the 52% drops to 5% for pedophiles who have treatment. The 5% figure is for all sex offenders (in a fairly small and short-term study); as you point out the categories need to be separated. Mixing them back in is a common cheat when lying with statistics, but I am sure that was an oversight as well.
"In Vermont, for instance, correctional officials tracked 195 adult male sex offenders over a six-year period. The sexual re-offense rate for those who completed treatment was 5.4 percent, versus a 30 percent rate for those who refused treatment or did not complete it. "
is that we may wind up accepting such monitoring without it being punitive at all. We're already seeing far too much of that sort of thing by government for investigative purposes as well as by private companies for marketing purposes. I agree with you, but it isn't going to be the punishment-for-child-molestation angle that starts us down the slippery slope.
No, it's about preventing further incidents of crime. Incarceration is no more than that. They can't hurt anybody because they're locked up. Rehabilitation is also a good idea for the same basic reason - preventing further crime.
Confusing incarceration with punishment is very similar to confusing incarceration with rehabilitation. It's just not effective as that kind of tool, but it doesn't keep people from using it that way.
(Other judgments are about deterrence as a means to prevent crime, and function to varying degrees; and dysfunction for that matter...)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
But of course when you commit a crime you loose all your rights, right? Nope, you serve time and then get them back either fully or under some form of monitoring,...
What about the right to vote? The right to bear arms? Many would contend the right to pursue happiness is never fully restored (records are not sealed against background checks in the US as they are in some countries). No, they don't get all their rights back. That would require further legal reform. Whether or not they should is another matter entirely.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The proper thing is for the lower court to modify the sentence and say that he can't have access to the internet via a computer. Of course, that still leaves open the definition of what constitutes a computer that others have mentioned.
If he's accessing the Internet, then he's doing so by computer. This is by definition.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The only source that says he existed is a single book, compiled from papers that come from almost a century later, that further contains all manner of information that can't be trusted - magic, superstition, etc. That doesn't make his existence likely.
No. We only have copies of the scrolls, codexes, etc. These all date from a hundred, or more, years after the time the story is placed in. There's no evidence whatsoever that there are four true stories. The book is full of fiction - magic, etc. - it is obviously a fabrication. Just because there are four chapters that purport to tell the story from four perspectives doesn't mean that any one of those perspectives is any more valid than the magical story of making wine out of water, etc.
The bottom line is that there is no contemporaneous evidence for the existence of Jesus. No tax records, nothing about the legal issues, nothing about the costs of the supposed execution, not one darned thing. All there is, is the NT, and it in turn isn't from the same time as the story. Every historical mention that talks about Christians (and what a pain in the neck they were, usually... some things just don't change) ...all of these mentions are about the Christian groups/cults of the day... not about Jesus himself.
People talking or writing about something -- even in a very emphatic and passionate manner -- is not evidence of the thing. Look at the Heaven's Gate cult. Those buffoons went so far as to off themselves... for an entirely imaginary premise. So the historical evidence that bands of Christians were running around causing havoc in the mid 50's is in no way a slam-dunk that there was a Jesus at all.
The only certainties about Christianity are that the leather and papyrus scraps that form the source for the NT are from 150 AD or later; that they are either each and every one a copy, and therefore we have no originals (this is the position of most reputable scholars, btw) or else they were created 150 AD or later; that there is no contemporaneous information about Jesus at all; and that the NT contains stories that are scientifically nonsensical.
Now, if that leads you to think that Jesus's existence is "likely"... well, you're one gullible person, that's all I can say. There's better book-evidence for the existence of Jack Ryan, CIA agent. At least the books that he is in don't have any magical malarkey in them. They do tell the story from multiple perspectives; they do refer to people, cities and geographies we can recognize; they do refer to events that actually happened... all of these places where bible apologists try to stand... but Jack Ryan stories are still 100% fiction. Odds hugely favor that Jesus is also fiction.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
MAJOR BULLSHIT COMING UP. TAKE COVER and that some clients left and did not re-offend within the 5 year window they followed up in.
WHOA, that was a bad one. Everyone okay? Okay, then lets start clearing up this mess before the next wave comes in.
What is this bullshit?
and that some clients left and were not caught within the 5 year window they followed up in.
Fact, only a tiny portion of crimes are ever solved and that is only of reported crimes. Many crimes go unreported. All those catholic child rapist in the news lately? 30 or more years without being caught.
This kinda bullshit is always pulled by the bleeding hearts.
For someone to register as a re-offender that person must:
All this, and we still get a 70-80+ recidivism rate. Treatment centers slap themselves on the back if they get 84% down to 83%. Whoo, we are so good!
Remember, when we talk about recidivism, we are getting the story from people in the industry. If they ever would suggest that it is all pointless, then they would be out of a job. A job that pays rather well. Only one person claimed it was pointless, right before he killed himself, and all his colleagues have done since is deny that he claimed what he claimed. They don't even try to revute the claims, because they can't. Just claim that he never made them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Please stop perpetuating the "paid dues" fallacy. The legal system isn't about retribution (when it's functioning), but about preventing future crime. In that light, your suggestions of jail or mental facility (and/or counseling) are still spot on.
Now arguments contending that his punishment may be ineffective at preventing future crime (ex: other vectors of attack) have some weight behind them. That he has "paid his dues" is just weak.
(I don't blame you. It's just a faulty paradigm that you've been taught.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
A friend of a former boss of mine was sentenced to 4 years in prison and once released, forbidden to use any electronic device for twenty years. The crime was computer related, but I was never told the specifics. Upon release, he challenged the restriction and was turned down the first time, but the second challenge, he brought along a tech-savey attorney. By pointing out even the most mundane of electronic devices including his hearing aid. Which his attorney pointed that technically it is an electronic device and it helps him deal with a hearing disability and that by denying him the right to use that device, then the judge would be violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Last I heard, the restriction was reduced, but I do not know the specifics
Better to be executed than sit in those torture centers the call prisons.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
and yes, their opinions ARE law... that's neither un-Constitutional nor new
Only in the loosest sense, and only through stare decisis. Such is referred to as "case law", and is subject to being overturned by a later or higher court. Legislating from the bench certainly isn't new, but is unconstitutional. The Judiciary has constitutional power to apply law given them by constitutionally authorized legislators, not to make stuff up themselves.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
There is a difference.
Many pedophiles go without Heck, many gay men and straight men are celibate as well. Celibate pedophiles are still pedophiles.
Many child molesters are not pedophiles. They are motivated by power or other issues besides romance or their own orgasm.
In most countries, pedophilia is not a crime. In the few that it is a crime, it's the very definition of a thought-crime.
In most or all countries, child molestation is a crime, as it should be.
By the way, there are so-called "adult" relationships that are very power-imbalanced. Whether it's the boss with his secretary, or a sophisticated person with someone who can vote but has the emotional maturity of a middle school student, the result is the same: An emotionally unequal but usually perfectly legal relationship.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
We don't have a justice system in the U.S.
We have a legal system. The best money can buy.
Assuming Jesus didn't exist, how did Christianity start?
Are you seriously proposing that a bunch of people got together, invented a story about a man who could do magic and believed it so much that they were willing to be burned on crosses and get eaten by lions before admitting that it was a hoax? Please abandon this conspiracy theory in favor of a more plausible one.
I wasn't there. Nor are there any reports from people who lived at the same time... just this one book, which is full of nonsense. So I don't know. However, I don't have a problem with that. Looking at modern examples of similar events, though, there are a number of reasonable candidates that don't involve magic, only human nature. The smart money bets on the mundane, not the magic. Because we've never - ever - been able to demonstrate any magic. Anywhere. Period. So either the cult is based upon a complete work of fiction - an idea that is backed by the fact that there is no evidence for Jesus's existence outside the cult itself; or else Jesus was just Some Dude, because again, everyone to date has been just Some Dude. No magical people. Ever. Anywhere. Period.
Yes, absolutely. It certainly would not be either the first time, or the last. See behaviors predicated upon the Hindu, Chinese, and many other mythologies to observe exactly the same thing. And more recently, Heaven's Gate, Muslim bombers, the behavior of the Protestants and Catholics in northern Ireland, and it is also interesting to consider the socially orthogonal behavior of those in Sun Myung Moon's recent cult. Also, pay attention to the history: That willingness, as it were, came along considerably after the time the biblical stories refer to. It is typical cult behavior. We still see it today in various sects of Christianity. Crucifixion, crawling miles on gravel, on bloodied knees, to get to church, and so forth. There's no shortage of demonstrative people with strong convictions, without the benefit of a real Jesus anywhere to be found.
Your faith in people's common sense is nice to see, but the objective facts don't support it at all. People, especially in groups with wacked out leadership, act dependably as excitable idiots. Go to a tent revival if you'd like a concrete modern example of this. Or a homeopathy seminar, for that matter.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
With regards to the "13" part, I'm inclined to see it as far enough away from 18/21 to not really be the gray area you seem to imply.
In general, I'm more concerned about violent crime (cf. Carlin, "I'd rather have my son watch a video of two people making love than two people trying to kill one another.")
However, some specific sex & other nonviolent crimes are more serious than some specific violent crimes.
Real-world gray areas stink. :(
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
As much as I want to see guilty people get punished
Sigh; why?
I want to see them dealt with effectively, which may or may not include stiff punishments; I understand if some important nuances got lost in a quick first post.
In a way, I'm saying that things like this are an example of ineffective punishment
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I long since figured that's a problem with the term "sex offender"; even with some distinctions legally drawn, it tends to lump together people with offenses with widely various degrees of seriousness.
Justified concern about the more-serious sex-related offenses somehow tends to trigger not-as-justified concerns about less-serious sex-related offenses
Witchhunts don't make sense, even if there are a few witches out there. :P
There's also the whole "improperly assessing the degree of risk" issue.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Assuming 'ms13' refers to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_Salvatrucha
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I had guessed that there might some sort of naturalness connection; however, I had been afraid to say it because making the connection makes pro-homosexual arguments even less successful.
It's not an absolute connection; however, valuable things could still be drawn from it while still recognizing the areas where it doesn't at all work.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
As someone who recognizes the reality of evolution, while also not being a homophobe, "why homosexuality exists" is a very interesting question.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Your proposal that all religions are hoaxes is astounding. I could believe that at some point in time, a person or a group of people managed to impress enough followers to start a religion. (S)he or they perpetrated some hoaxes, fooled some simple minds and started a legend. But your suggestion that this is how ALL the major religions of the world started is simply absurd. The amount of complexity involved with creating deceptions of this scale is too big to have succeeded so many times.
Again, please stop spreading false conspiracy theories and state something that's actually believable.
The reason pedophilia is considered reprehensible is because it tends to leave the children emotionally damaged, unable to form proper relationships, and generally messed up for life.
So it's like school then?
A bit off-topic here, but given the high-profile 15-year-old who killed herself over being bullied, you may not be far off the mark. Despite the best and most sincere efforts on the part of teachers and staff, many people walk out of high school more emotionally messed up than when they walked in, due to bad things that happened to them on school grounds.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Thank you AC, whoever you are.
Especially for that last line.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Being asked to report once a week, by someone who is overworked, is NOT intense supervision.
Parole ain't as hard as you think it is.
In Holland we got TBS (Forced mental treatment) and there are countless incidents with inmates being let out for a short while and offending.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In states with no Romeo and Juliet laws, "typically" if both parties are under-aged, only the older one is charged, or if both are close in age the cops will look the other way unless an angry parent insists on charges being filed.
But suppose the cops don't look the other way and the age difference is minutes not a year or two. Would the state prosecute both "to be fair," or would they just go after the older one, never mind that "older" is a matter of minutes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
the problem I have with this is, that a punishment this broad turns this guy from one of the people earning a living and helping me and the other tax payers, into someone who is going to have to live off the system and be part of the tax burden.
I made no such proposal. I simply start from the premise that some are known to be (Scientology... Heaven's Gate... etc.), and since all theist religions are nonsense, and that religion is a first-order gateway to power in most societies, that intentional deceit is one of the very likely candidates for their origin. There is both motive and opportunity.
Again, I made no such suggestion. You really need to work on those reading skills. I said that I was suggesting that Christianity may have started that way, and that it would not be either the first time, or the last, and that people had given their lives for a hoax, and laid out a few examples.
What's not believable about one possibility for Christianity's origin being a constructed religion? I mean, look at it: We have total nonsense stories about magic, and quite a few of them, told in the present tense -- not just creation stories, but stories about a magical man who walked among the people of the time (of whom there is no actual record.) We have direct conflicts in the associated myths, right in the cult's own book (for instance, Luke says Mary was being purified in Jerusalem at the same time that Matthew says Mary was hiding in Egypt, waiting for Herod to die -- one or the other... or both... of those statements is an untruth.) And Christianity has been, since it's very founding, a power base. It was used to oppose the Romans, to stand apart from the Jews, to found communities and secret societies and so forth. It has grown today into some of the wealthier entities on the planet - the Catholic church is a good example of one of those entities - and yet, the whole thing is based upon nonsense stories; furthermore, many components of those stories resemble previous religions almost to a 't.' Smells an awful lot like "borrowing."
As I said, (and please pay attention this time), I don't know how Christianity got started. There's no record of that except in the bible, and as the bible proves itself an unreliable record many times over, I won't accept the bible's account of anything as evidence by itself. I just consider it likely that it was an intentional construct. But hey, it might have been just bad bread... you can see amazing visions with a little fungus byproduct in your system. Or the whole thing might have been the result of a head injury. Or dreams. CS Lewis asks, "Liar, lunatic or lord?" I think he's being more than a little disingenuous there, as there certainly are other possibilities (such as entirely fictional, alien, or peacemaker) but as one can ask those questions about Jesus, one can also pose them about the religion itself. Lies are certainly not uncommon in human experience.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is probably more thought than the court gave.