Author Topic: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn  (Read 21306 times)

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Offline Bobboau

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
Of course all Japanese men aren't perverts, but Japanese culture is deeply problematic.

Japanese culture is incredibly sexually repressed. the reason its the ****ed-up-porn capitol of the world is because the porn they make there has to follow the letter of the law, and they have to get creative sometimes.
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Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
sexual orientation
"Being attracted to a group of people who cannot give consent" is not a sexual orientation; it is a mental disorder. Please stop making false equivalences with homosexuality; it is incredibly insulting.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline zookeeper

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
sexual orientation
"Being attracted to a group of people who cannot give consent" is not a sexual orientation; it is a mental disorder. Please stop making false equivalences with homosexuality; it is incredibly insulting.

Ok, well, I don't think that weakens my point so I can go with that:

Pedophile, child molester. People don't care that there's a difference.
I know I certainly don't care that there's a difference. The only way for everyone to know that you're a pedophile is for you to either announce it to the world (in which case you have only yourself to blame for the bad publicity), or act upon your urges... which would make you a child molester.

Wait, what? That doesn't make any sense. There's all kinds of ways (between staying in the closet, announcing it to the world and actually being a child molester) of how someone's mental disorder can become known to you. And why should a pedophile not have the same freedom to announce their unchosen disorders to the world the same as everyone else anyway? After all, that seems like a clear sign they don't actually intend to molest children because being a known pedophile rather lowers the chance of people leaving their kids with them.

 

Offline Flipside

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
When I was in primary school, someone actually tried to talk me into getting into their car, fortunately, we'd had the lecture on 'stranger danger', and when the driver told me my parents had sent him, I asked him their names and he drove off very quickly. The response to that was simply to tell me I'd done the right thing, nowadays it would be all over the papers in full paranoid mode.

The problem is that 'think of the children' has become such a valuable Media/Political tool that the children actually no longer count, only the points that can be scored by 'protecting' them.

As for the homosexuality thing, there's two factors at work here, societies attitudes towards those involved and their own attitude towards themselves. It's a quandary, because what happens is a crime, there is a victim in child abuse whether the victim 'knows' it or not. But these people cannot get the help and support they need to overcome their condition if society has a similar attitude to the attitude they had towards homosexuals 40 years ago. That, to me, is that only real point where the two completely different forms of sexual behaviour have something in common.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
There's all kinds of ways (between staying in the closet, announcing it to the world and actually being a child molester) of how someone's mental disorder can become known to you.
...So? If your point is just that my statement wasn't literally true, well, congratulations, but it wasn't meant to be. If this isn't just semantics, then I'm going to need you to expound upon your point there.

And why should a pedophile not have the same freedom to announce their unchosen disorders to the world the same as everyone else anyway?
They do have that freedom. In which case, as I already said (in the post you just quoted), "you have only yourself to blame for the bad publicity". Your freedom to announce your pedophilia to the world does not remove the freedom of the rest of the world to condemn you for being a pedophile.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
sexual orientation
"Being attracted to a group of people who cannot give consent" is not a sexual orientation; it is a mental disorder. Please stop making false equivalences with homosexuality; it is incredibly insulting.
The problem is that "Being attracted to a group of people who cannot give consent" is not equivalent to pedophilia. Remember, in this case, it's the body of a child that is attractive, not it's inability to give consent. Being aroused by the very fact someone can't give consent is indeed a mental condition, but pedophilia is just being attracted to children before puberty. If someone looks the part, but are otherwise fully capable of giving consent, that's not going to be a problem for a pedophile (indeed, that would be the ideal solution of the problem). That's why it's quite a tragic situation to be in, too. Pedophilia is a sexual orientation, but one that can, like zoophilia (believe me, there's a movement in Germany that's trying to get that legalized...), has a problem of unavailability of consenting partners.

That's why "conventional" punishments or even psychological help rarely works in such cases. Actual pedophilia is not a mental disorder, though child molestation can also result from a number of psychological problems and is a wider issue than pedophilia itself.
Of course all Japanese men aren't perverts, but Japanese culture is deeply problematic.
Remember that from their point of view, we are weird. Japanese, as well as the other cultures in the region, are very, very different from us. So, the question is, can we judge them by our own values? Their view of sexuality, honor, heck, even of human life and it's value is fundamentally different from ours. Better or worse? Well, that's impossible to say, at least for a human. All culture is, by it's nature, highly subjective. Each of them is probably best suited wherever they evolved in. As such, trying to transplant a different culture in a place where there already is one is a very morally shaky endeavor, since it usually loses unique mechanisms used to better adapt to environment, and also brings it's own, often useless in the new environment. That has been known to do harm, though cultures are though to uproot and old elements trickle back in, sometimes even being transplanted back.

As such, the Japanese and their culture are probably best not messed with by outsiders. Their very way of thinking is almost completely alien to us. They can be understood, but it's hard, and pretty much requires spending a good chunk of life there.
Clearly you haven't looked closely at the majority of other humans. :p
Well, I'm not saying everybody is pleasant to look at. :) But that's somewhat irrelevant. Heck, some people can look traumatizing even in a full morning dress, which is an achievement considering how snazzy those look. :) But that's beside the point, on an average man (or woman), nudity is not that unpleasant to look at once you get rid of sexual connotations. Now, old people and people with various diseases might be worse, but they probably wouldn't want to go out naked anyway, for other reasons. Of course, a clothed person will usually look better than an unclothed one, if they're not wearing a potato sack, at least. Most of our clothes are, afterall, not only meant to cover our bodies, but also make us look good, mask imperfections and convey various messages. There are, of course, exceptions, but for most people finding clothing that they'll look worse in than if they were naked requires exceptional anti-talent.

Anyway, point is, there's nothing wrong with nakedness, and any traumatizing impact it might have (in most cases it doesn't) comes from it's sexual connotations, which are pretty pointless. Once you get over this, it's nothing bad or sinful in seeing other people naked, nor being seen naked yourself. Nudity should not be criminalized like it is now.

 

Offline Aardwolf

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
@AdmiralRalwood: Pedophilia, and paraphilias in general, are not inherently harmful to anyone. Things that are not inherently harmful to anyone should not be condemned (utilitarian ethics exist, regardless of the status quo).

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
Pedophilia [is] not inherently harmful to anyone.
We are never going to agree on that.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Aardwolf

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
Consider a pedophile who suppresses his urges, either keeping it in his pants or keeping it in his wastebin. Who is he harming?

 

Offline Flipside

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
The problem is cyclic enabling, for every person that is looking at pictures of underage children on the Internet, it means there is a call for someone to take those photographs. So abuse is almost certainly happening at one point or another.

The problem is not the concept of 'mind crime', those who have pedophilic urges but supress them in every way are not criminals, I agree, though they may be making problems for themselves in later life if they do not address those urges, but someone who just looks at images, for example, are enabling, whether they realize it or not.

 

Offline zookeeper

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
There's all kinds of ways (between staying in the closet, announcing it to the world and actually being a child molester) of how someone's mental disorder can become known to you.
...So? If your point is just that my statement wasn't literally true, well, congratulations, but it wasn't meant to be. If this isn't just semantics, then I'm going to need you to expound upon your point there.

Well, you said that you don't care about the difference between pedophile and child molester, and you said that in context of law enforcement making arrests or bringing charges against non-molesting pedophiles in order to seem like they're protecting children even when they're not. When you then also justify not caring by saying that if you know someone to be a pedophile, it's actually their own fault one way or another, it certainly seems like you don't mind people being in trouble simply for being pedophiles, regardless of whether they molest children or not.

That's what I was responding to, not just the semantics.

And why should a pedophile not have the same freedom to announce their unchosen disorders to the world the same as everyone else anyway?
They do have that freedom. In which case, as I already said (in the post you just quoted), "you have only yourself to blame for the bad publicity". Your freedom to announce your pedophilia to the world does not remove the freedom of the rest of the world to condemn you for being a pedophile.

Point was that condemning someone for something they didn't choose is bad. Wouldn't you agree with that?



EDIT:

The problem is cyclic enabling, for every person that is looking at pictures of underage children on the Internet, it means there is a call for someone to take those photographs. So abuse is almost certainly happening at one point or another.

The problem is not the concept of 'mind crime', those who have pedophilic urges but supress them in every way are not criminals, I agree, though they may be making problems for themselves in later life if they do not address those urges, but someone who just looks at images, for example, are enabling, whether they realize it or not.

Just looking isn't enabling in any meaningful sense of the word, though. If you pay for it, or for example click on ads associated with it, or otherwise signal demand (other than by just looking, that is) then certainly. Do child porn producers keep doing what they do just because they can tell someone keeps downloading what they upload? I don't see any reason to believe that. There has to be an actual financial or social connection between producer and consumer, a mere pageview counter doesn't really cut it.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2014, 07:37:39 pm by zookeeper »

 

Offline Aardwolf

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
Enabling... I hadn't thought of that. But it's still not inherent. Counterexamples: lolicon; people with good imaginations.

 

Offline Flipside

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
That's the problem with things like pedophile rings, one person obtains the pictures through whatever method and then shares them with the others in the group. In many cases those photos are actually of relatives of one of the members of that group and there's often no charge because by sharing them it means the original photographer feels 'justified' in what they are doing and may even be encouraged to do so by other members of the ring.

To me, at least, it's not really a question of whether money was made from the photograph or not, it's the fact that if there is a demand for such pictures, then there will be a supply of them, which means somewhere, someone is taking photographs of children for sexual gratification of themselves and others.

@Aardwolf, oddly enough, I don't have much of an issue with Japanese cartoons etc, animation is animation. I do think it's sick and perverse, but then, no-one is actually getting hurt, and no-one is forcing me to watch it. Mind Crime is not something I support, but when you get to real people, that's when my concerns begin.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2014, 08:03:26 pm by Flipside »

 

Offline Black Wolf

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
This tangent stops now. No, Lorric, equating homosexuals (who can act on their desires with other likeminded people without committing a crime) and pedophiles (who can't) is not the conversational gambit you want to take. Equating the two because homosexuality used to be illegal is not the right way to argue your point, whatever the **** you think it is.

There are two reasons why this is an objectively terrible post.

First, the argument Lorric's making touches on a number of different things, hut one of its major components is basically an argument of moral absolutism vs. Cultural relativism; i.e., in the past,homosexuality was considered morally reprehensible, now it is not. Was itever objectively morally wrong? Can we apply the same questions to paedophilia?

Now, I'm not interested in the relative merits of the arguments either way on absolute vs. Culturally relative morality either way. But that debate has been going on in its current form for decades, and in one form or another for centuries. Both sides have strong adherents, and its vigorously debated. For you to come in and not only declare your absolutist position to be correct, but to also try to stifle any debate on such a massive issue is incredibly arrogant.

Worse than that, though, is your justification for that position. Deriving moral acceptability from legality is... mind blowingly simplistic, and probably offensive to some people. You're effectively saying that the only moral difference between consensual homosexual sex and "pseudoconsensual" (I don't know the right term for unforced sex with someone too young to give consent - I'm not sure if statutory rape applies?) sex with a 13 year old is that one is legal and one isn't. By your definition, they're otherwise morally equal. What about countries where that's reversed? In Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, where a man can legally impregnate his 13 year old child bride, but death by stoning is the legally enforced punishment for sodomy? Is an Afghani homosexual the moral equivalent of an Australian/German/whatever child molester? You don't even need to leave the western world - was Alan Turing the moral equivalent of Rolf Harris because both broke UK law to fulfil their sexual desires?

More than that, consider what would happen if the law changed? Anti marijuana legalization advocates are always saying that the human brain doesn't fully stop developing until 25. What if the law changed and 25 became the age of consent? Would I then become the moral equivalent of a child molester if I had sex with a 22 year old? After all, I'd be committing a crime by acting on my desires, right?

All this, the moral absolutism and the legal basis for morality is made worse by the fact that you're posting it in a thread about how bad the legal system is at determining the morality of specific instances of sexual behaviour, and that inflexibly applying the letter of ge law is a terrible way to decide what is acceptable and what isn't.

My point here isn't to pretend that child rape is okay. It obviously isn't. But it's unacceptable not because it's illegal, but because it's morally wrong. I think you probably believe that too, E, so I'm confused about why you posted otherwise in the first place.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
It's probably just saying the same thing as BW in a different way, but the false equivalency being presented doesn't have much to do with Lorric's original point.  The conclusion that consenting adults should be able to freely engage in mutual sexual activity is for practical purposes completely separate from the status of homosexuality as a type of sexual orientation.  (Indeed, one can engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex and yet not identify as a homosexual.)  Similarly, the fact that a pedophile cannot engage in sexual activity with minors, because of the legal inability of the latter to given consent, is a separate issue from whether pedophilia is an ingrained preference.  I took Lorric's point to mean that both homosexuality and pedophilia are inherent, non-chosen sexual preferences, and while that point is open for discussion based on the evidence at hand (honestly I'm not personally aware if there have been any conclusive studies about pedophilia), I don't see why the legality of acting on each preference should have any bearing on talking about it.

 

Offline MP-Ryan

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
I find it amusing that we now have a full page and a half on alternate sexual attraction, in which people are arguing vigorously, and yet no one has apparently looked up any of the psychology and behavioural genetics research on the subject.

Last I looked, there was a pretty excellent body of research that shows sexual identity is biologically determined (genetic and developmental), sexual orientation (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual) is a combination of congenital/developmental biology, and sexual preference (your various -philias and fetishes) is psychologically learned on an individual basis which is reinforced in brain neurological development, typically at a young age, in a concept my Abnormal Psychology professor liked to describe as a "love map."

However, there is no discernable inheritance pattern for either sexual orientation or preference; neither is genetically-determined.  There is fairly strong evidence for a biological origin for sexual orientation, but virtually none (at least, as far as I'm aware) that says the same for preferences.  All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that homosexuality and pedophilia are not remotely comparable in origin or behaviour.  Practicing pedophiles often manage to convince themselves of a child's ability to give consent, or practice psychological manipulation on their victims.  No such behaviour is evident in typical hetero- or homosexuals.  Of note is that homosexuality is an orientation and pedophilia is a preferential attraction; they are not mutually exclusive.  Finally, being sexually abused as a child is a correlative indicator of pedophilic interest, suggesting a learned connection that becomes ingrained in neurobiology through neurological development as the person ages.

Obligatory reading material to start with:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24850896  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23517571  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23861406

More science, less bull****ting in here, please.
« Last Edit: July 12, 2014, 12:08:42 am by MP-Ryan »
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Offline Aardwolf

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
No one has looked at the body of research on that subject because nobody has been talking about that subject for the past 22 posts, aside from a general sense of "neither one is something you choose".

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
I tried to keep what I said inconclusive because I honestly know little to nothing about those particular fields, and I wasn't aware of how much had been established about the origins of pedophilic attractions, or indeed even that there was any fundamental difference between "orientation" and "preference."  Thanks for providing some good info.

 

Offline Zacam

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
Just to point out, not that I have seen anything that requires any action, but that there were posts reported.

Not to step on any toes, I don't know what other moderators or administrators are going to do and I'm not going to presume or interfere with them on it, but I wanted to get some thoughts in here:

The subject matter of discussion HAS derailed some bit from what I interpreted the initial post as pertaining to, but it has remained topical and civilized and adult (from a perspective of "mature" rather than "crass but can get away with it") so I'd just like to acknowledge that and encourage keeping it civilized.

Bear in mind though, that allowing for discussion and/or participation of a discussion does not in any way equal enabling/ennoblement/tolerance, merely that there is an allowance for such a discussion to take place. Until such a time as it ends up directly devolving or violating the forum standards that is, which I'd rather hope it doesn't.
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Offline Flipside

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Re: Virginia - Making child porn to fight child porn
Well, the problem is delineating between 'perfect world' and 'real world' situations. To my mind, in a perfect world, someone could admit their attraction to children and receive understanding and support from society in general, but this is unlikely to happen in the real world.

I don't find those who are arguing that pedophilia is not inherently wrong purely by its' existence to be necessarily 'defending' it in any way, just stating that the desire to commit something that is defined as a crime is not in and of itself a crime. That is what I define as a 'perfect world' situation though, it's really re-stating the ideals that form the basis of a lot of legal systems.

However, the problem is that when these ideals meet the real world, it's a lot harder to trace the impact of even passive actions, it's a real test of the legal system to unravel this mess, and I do believe that currently the system is far too blunt in its approach, which is what leads to situations such as the original topic of this thread.

To my mind, sexual attraction to a child is not a crime in and of itself, however, unlike something like Homosexuality, which suffered wholly from external judgement of both people involved based on their activities, the situation when one of those people is a minor is far, far more complex and dangerous. That's not because the adult is inherently 'evil', it's because the other person is a minor and therefore not sexually mature or capable of making an informed decision on sexual activity.

For the main part, I've found the conversation very high-brow, whilst people may have said things that made people uncomfortable, nothing has really been said that I would consider offensive or simply trolling, just a clash of that perfect world and the real one.