Amen-Moses

Isn't bribery a form of coercion?

Amen-Moses

luvluv

I don't see how you guys can say this guy is wrong. He is acting in his own interests and preserving his culture. Why should he care what the girl thinks or wants? We might have some curious self-delusion that the girl's desires have some ultimate importance but this is just a pleasing fiction. He enjoys having sex with this girl and can get away with it. Unless you can demonstrate that what the girl wants has some transcendent value, he's doing exactly what he should be doing.

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

vixstile

I'm currently reading some stuff by Bertrand Russell dealing with this subject, so far i'm very much in agreement with him.

Amen-Moses

Same way you can, i.e you find it distasteful. Of course under biblical law he didn't do anything wrong!

Amen-Moses

hinduwoman

But even if she was over 16, she was still sold and obviously was not willing. So would the police have arrested him?

jasonpiao

The girl was taken to his house. He told her to take off her clothes, she did. He had sex with her. (Notice I am clear on the difference between 'they had sex' and 'he did it TO her) When the parents returned in the morning, she expressed a desire to return with them. Indeed, she seemed to want to return to her same age boyfriends and peers. Understandable.
It does not say that she was incredibly upset or morally outraged. All it says is that she preferred her own choice. It does not say she was forced, though coercion is quite clear.
If he had handed her a hundred dollar bill after the fact would it be such an outrageous story? No.
Yet he had been paying for years, probably quite a healthy amount of money that the parents were clearly profiting from.
Where is the outrage at the parents?
The article does not say she was physically forced to have sex. It sounds like she went through the motions out of some sort of obligation.
That is sad. It is something no human being should have to do. But is HE the guilty of some outrageous crime? I just find it hard to accept the level of indignation being expressed here when buying sex has been happening for thousands of years and still happens now all over the planet. Yet he didn't even think it was wrong. Neither did the parents.
When the europeans landed on the islands of polynesia, the natives didn't know that they couldn't just take things they needed. The sailors shot them for stealing. It is very easy to impose punishment on people for crimes that they don't think they've commited, and feel justified in that. I have no qualms with being punished when I know my crime, but you can't just walk into my house and call me guilty of one I've never heard of.
I am open to correction on this...

Glory

According to the laws in my country, a minor is not capable of making the decision to have sex with full knowledge and understanding of the possible consequences of the act. When an adult is involved, a minor is very vulnerable to manipulation by a person they have been conditioned to regard as an authority figure. Most children are conditioned to regard any adult as an authority figure. The law says a consenting minor is still the victim of rape.



It was not her parents who visited her the next day. It was some of her friends. No one returned for her. Her friends fetched the police when Pascoe made it known with a gun that the girl was now his prisoner. The article says nothing about why the girl wanted to leave. You assume to know her reasons and assume that they are relevaent. I don't see that they are relevant at all. If she wanted to go buy disco shoes Pascoe had no right to stop her and certainly no right to stop her with a gun.



You don't consider threatening her with a gun force? You really think a girl raised by parents who would except money for her hand in marraige and who did not ever consult her about their choice of husband for her ever had a real choice? Does it not seem as though the women in this culture are raised to be submissive and obedient? Force is not defined by the threat of violence alone.



If things were different they wouldn't be the same. What does this have to do with anything? She was not a prostitute.



I have plenty of outrage at the parents. They sold their daughter! They should be arrested and their parental rights terminated. They should be forced to surrender all proceeds from the arrangement with Pascoe. They should do time.



That's why it's statutory rape. The fact that she was a minor means that she cannot consent. Physical force is not necessary for it to be rape and for it to be wrong. And again you have made assumptions about what happened which are not supported by the article. The article gives no details as to the exact events at Pascoe's home on the night in question nor does it allude to how the girl felt.



Yes.



It isn't about prostitution. It's about this girl's right to live her life the way she wants to rather than how her parents want her to and her right to decide who she will have sex with and when. She deserves to not be the victim of abuse and imprisonment.



Yes I can. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. If one is truly ignorant of the law, I think they deserve the chance to learn it and avoid breaking it again. They do not get to continue breaking the law because they don't like it and they don't get to continue to benefit from their crime.

The real problem I have with this, though, is the judge. He has decided that as long as she knew it was happening, the girl should have her destiny decided for her by her parents and Pascoe. He figures it's fine to treat a human being like a thing so long as she wasn't surprised by the plan. There was a time when black children in the U.S. knew what was expected of them as well. Does that mean that the people who enslaved them should have been allowed to continue the practice? After all, they knew what was expected of them so they didn't need protection from the Quakers and the slavers didn't consider the practice of slavery to be wrong.
My daughter doesn't consider it wrong to throw golfballs at other children's heads. I am going to punish her for doing it though.

Glory

[ October 12, 2002: Message edited by: Glory ]</p>

luvluv

Amen-Moses:

I find people who wipe their nose on their sleeves distasteful, but I don't believe they should be thrown in jail. What justifies you having more distaste with a man raping a girl, who has no objective value, than a man wiping his nose on his sleeve? It's only your Noble Lie that the girl has some sort of transcendant value which makes your reaction more intense in terms of the girl than in terms of the snot on the shirt sleeve. But, according to materialism, the snot on the shirt sleeve and the girl have precisely the same objective value: zero. Since what the man is doing with the girl does not hinder his self-interest, there isn't one reason why he should care what she thinks or wants. There is nothing special about life.

He's breaking what is emphatically stated in the Bible as being one of the two most important laws: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

DMB

People from a huge variety of cultures have accepted the <a href="http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html" target="_blank">Universal Declaration of Human Rights,</a> to say nothing of subsequent UN human rights instruments. These are founded on the principle of the equal value of all human beings, based on their humanity. The rights are vested in the individual rather than the community. Article 16 is relevant to this discussion.

Of course, this treatment of girls and women as objects to be bought and sold is distressingly common in many cultures. The Aborigines are not alone in thinking that a girl can or should be married off as soon as she has had her first period, or even before. Some girls from muslim families are pushed into marriage as young as 9.

luvluv presumably is affecting not to believe in human rights. Is this a result of surrendering one's intellect to theism?

Glory

The lack of intrinsic value as an excuse for acting only in selfinterest. You're quite a humanitarian. I don't treat people according to their objective or intrinsic value and neither does the law. I treat people according to the golden rule. Your argument has been used to justify every atrocity ever committed from the inquisition to the bombing of Dresden. It's meaningless, of course. On the other hand, it does give me an excuse to ignore you because you have no intrinsic or objective value.

Glory

[ October 12, 2002: Message edited by: Glory ]</p>