Originally posted by TheColdDragon
reply to post by orderedchaos
Firstly, you are mistaking some of the people in the thread as "Polanski Defenders", when some of us are not defending Polanski as much as ridiculing society's take on certain things tangentially related to the Polanski situation.
And why should you ridicule society? You, perhaps, know better than an organic consensus of peers?
You've brought up other cultures, modern and ancient. My field of doctoral study was the Augustan age and its effects on Rabbinic Judaism--historical Jesus stuff. Because this is my area of expertise I tend to romanticize the ancient world a bit and find myself saying to others that I wish we could be "more like the Romans" or "more like the ancients". While I do feel that they have much to teach us in certain respects, there is no perfect society. In order to achieve anything of substance, nay, anything at all, a sacrifice must be made. In order for there to have been no prison system in the ancient world (and save the citizens $$) they had public displays of barbarity to achieve the same results.
You bring up Japanese culture quite a bit as an example of where what we here in the west consider "underage" girls being acceptable manga fantasy. Arguing that it is acceptable in Japan does not mean that it is acceptable. It means that the Japanese have no problem with it. That's all. If Roman Polanski had performed the same act in Japan this might not have been an issue, but he did not. He did this in California, USA.
Had Roman done this in ancient Roman (heh heh, Roman-Roman, heh heh) provinces this could have gone down in several different ways. First, the fact that he was a theatrical performer would have led society to judge him more harshly and characterize him as someone capable of lying easily. Second, had her father demanded his death for stealing from the Geimer household (and his being the son of peasants) he may have gotten to work out his crimes in the arena, consensual or not as the girl was not her own being but property of her father and the father was not asked for permission.
Now, you may wave around other cultures taboos, or lack thereof, as to age of sexual maturity and sex, but you are being disingenuous if you argue that a thirteen year old girl having had sex with a man she was not married to would not have castigated her permanently in Japanese culture. Tell us, if you will, what would have happened to the thirteen year old girl that had sex with a man not her husband and not of her country?
Do you recall the incident of the twelve year old Okinawan raped by the three African Americans? Please tell us how it was written about. Did they or did they not state in Japanese and Okinawan papers how horrible it was because she would be considered "dirty" and un-marriable? How did they describe the black men? Please tell us the wording, if you will.
Regardless of whether or not people may have a fetish for something or drawn to an image sexually, societies the world over have frowned upon people doing anything at all about it. Those societies that were permissive tend to be frowned upon by other societies. The court of public opinion has ruled on this subject matter.
Now, if you wish to disregard "culture" as a justification and talk purely behavioral science that is another story altogether.
There seem to be two groups of people, the people who think a thirteen year old is a child and the people who don't.That is very black and white. Age and maturity are too different things. Experience, physiology, and even mental capacity all affect the type of maturity (mental over physical) that allows wise decision-making, hence why there are laws.
From a rationalist standpoint, ignoring what culture and society thinks is black and white, every human being deserved equal treatment from the justice system.Equal application of justice. Not all crimes are equal. He should have the same application as a poor man or a minority, or conversely, they have the same application given to him: rehab. *eyeroll*
This doesn't necessarily happen, but it is something that should happen. The problem is that large sections of the populace do not want equal justice for certain types of crime, such as anything to do with harming a child.
It is worse to have consensual sex with an underage girl than it is to murder an underage girl to most in society.Not true, speculative.
Murder carries a lighter sentence.Not true, child rape receives 100 days in rehab. Ask Polanski. You are creating an argument and then refuting it. Try killing a child in a "red" state. You will get the death penalty. You can't get much harsher than that.
Even more disturbing, Rape means basically anything nowadays... rather than forceful, coercive sex against an unwilling partipicant and generally with violence involved, it can be any consenting individual who is of an age disparity with the accused or whom is below the states legal age of consent.We live in a Democratic Republic. Those laws are made by elected state representatives, ergo the will of the people has spoken. They were made to protect young people who are easily influenced by older people from being put in a position where they would have difficulty saying "no". For the sake of argument, those few girls mature enough to make the same decisions about their body as an eighteen year old would also be mature enough to understand "law" and not be irresponsible with the freedom of the older person. If not, they were probably not mature enough to have sex in the first place, eg not mature enough to understand what "yes" meant.
Are you saying that people are not allowed to forgive criminals unless the law and society has already had their shot at punishing the individual?Who is stopping them from forgiving the criminal? Forgiveness is emotional. They are punished by society to prevent similar crimes from others or continue on with the same behavior.
It is alright to forsake the foundations of thought and reason for the desire to punish and perpetuate a deep seated societal hatred for individuals that have been branded as human trash?Society has decided that it values and protects children, those who do not are regarded as "trash" by that society. It is how it has always been. He could have moved to another society, Tanzania, perhaps where this is a non-issue. But he wanted the "everything else" that came with living in Hollywood. Eventus stultorum magister!
And not only that, you feel it is fine to ridicule and associate people who defend individuals with an aberrant sexual proclivity with whom they defend, demonstrating a lack of dissemination between the defender and the item they are defending?It is called the court of public opinion. You won't be thrown in jail for your words on these threads, but you will receive the barbs and stings that come with it. That is how humans have worked since tribal societies. I've been called worse than a rapist. I could allow it to sway me, but I don't because I keep my own counsel. In fact, I now wear it as a badge of honor. WORSE THAN A RAPIST ought to be my signature! What do you care what I, or anyone else, thinks about you? I, for one, do not.
Homines libenter quod volunt credunt!
[edit on 5-10-2009 by A Fortiori]
