Danged Guvmint in yer bedroom!!

Shame on any state that doesn't protect their children. It took this long for Colorado to get this law? I wonder how many other states lack the laws to call this rape, molestation, pedo, etc..

Colorado isn't even considered by most people to be one of our backward states. What's going on in the rural areas of mississippi? Yikes..

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Jul 20 2006, 08:42 AM) [snapback]289289[/snapback]</div>

Once in a while, we can all agree. What on earth was going on when the court said a 12 year old could get married? Aren't there allowed to be situations where everyone in the courtroom looks at the standing law, and then each other, and postpones the ruling until some sort of REASONABLE law is passed?

No worries (sorry?) on getting us liberals up in arms here, our position revolves around consenting adults.

12 years old... ::sigh::

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(geologyrox @ Jul 20 2006, 06:06 AM) [snapback]289300[/snapback]</div>

Courts have nothing to do with reason, and everything to do with procedure. That's why, for example, in her written opinion in Herrera, where the issue was whether Herrera was actually guilty of the crime, but the court had determined that the trial had no legal errors, Sandra Day O'Conner stated that a person who has been convicted in a fair trial is actually guilty. She could not distinguish between a legal conclusion arrived at in a trial that had followed the correct procedures, and the actual facts of what had happened in the crime (i.e., who the real murderer was.)

Similarly in this case, the court looks at what the law states, and follows its procedures. Words on paper become more "real" for the court than human beings.

That's why you're more likely to get off if you're guilty but you have a competent, well-prepared lawyer, than if you're innocent but your lawyer is incompetent or insufficiently prepared.

 

I did go find an article on the original court ruling, and was a little relieved. Apparently, the judges looked at the laws on the books, and discovered there wasn't a minimum age for common law marriages. It seems that their opinion was something like, "Well, there isn't a law for this yet, so we have to revert to English common law. Unfortunately, that makes this legal. We're referring this back to the trial judge, so hurry up and legislate something sensible." I'm sure that the English common law they revert to was very, very old, and/or written for purposes much like you suggested.

We've got the out of date laws here, too - as I recall, it's illegal in Florida for unmarried women to go skydiving on Sundays. We've had fun over the years wondering how a law like that comes about. In high school, it got passed around that there was still a law in Daytona Beach that prohibited farting in a public place after 6:00pm on Thursdays.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Jul 20 2006, 05:42 AM) [snapback]289289[/snapback]</div>

I grew up there. You probably don't want to know.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(geologyrox @ Jul 20 2006, 08:42 AM) [snapback]289394[/snapback]</div>

That last one sounds like an urban legend. Why would they have specified Thursdays?

There was a thing floating around the internet (I don't know if it's true, but I think this one is) that in Kansas (not positive about the state) it's illegal to sit on the curb of a public street drinking beer from a bucket. -- Apparently at one time beer was commonly sold in buckets. You provide your own bucket. Loafers might have a seat on the curb when they leave the store, and drink from their bucket. They'd have been considered a nuisance. But the law seems unnecessary at a time when beer is no longer sold in buckets.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wstander @ Jul 20 2006, 08:54 AM) [snapback]289400[/snapback]</div>

Yes. But that would not have necessitated an explicit statement that a man convicted in a "fair" trial IS ACTUALLY GUILTY. The emphasized words are a quite from O'Conner's written opinion.

 

Found this site...it has a bunch of really funny ones!

Dumb laws

Here is a sample from Florida:

Women may be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer, as can the salon owner.

A special law prohibits unmarried women from parachuting on Sunday or she shall risk arrest, fine, and/or jailing.

If an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle.

It is illegal to sing in a public place while attired in a swimsuit.

Men may not be seen publicly in any kind of strapless gown.Having sexual relations with a porcupine is illegal.

It is illegal to skateboard without a license.

When having sex, only the missionary position is legal.

You may not fart in a public place after 6 P.It is considered an offense to shower naked.

You are not allowed to break more than three dishes per day, or chip the edges of more than four cups and/or saucers.

Oral sex is illegal.

You may not kiss your wife's breasts.

Penalty for horse theft is death by hanging

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(geologyrox @ Jul 20 2006, 08:42 AM) [snapback]289394[/snapback]</div>

That sounds more reasonable. Courts are about procedure, and as the famous book says, "The Law is an nice person" (meaning a stubborn animal, not a body part). But usually there is more to the story.

There are various state laws governing age of consent, and then policies adopted by prosecutors to make those laws make sense. When talking about "common law" marriage, or couples cohabitating without benefit of marriage, its usually the age of consent that becomes the issue rather than the "marriage age" (which is 18 in most parts of the country, with some states requiring parental consent for marriages between 16 and 18, and/or a judge's overview). Age of consent laws can actually be more liberal than marriage laws, as kids can fool around long before they can enter into an enforceable contract.

Most state laws recognized only an adult male as a possible 'statutory rapist', taking the view that women would not want to engage in sex with children (for the most part, that's true, as pedophiles are most often men). So age of consent laws were a way to prevent locking up a hormonal 15 year old who was caught with his hormonal 15 year old friend solely because he was male (a female could not be prosecuted for statutory rape, so the male partner was the only one to blame). Gender equality laws are passed now in most areas so that they could conceivably try to figure out which one of the hormonal 15 year olds was more hormonal than the other. But most teen sex at 15 or 16 is not treated criminally.

Some areas, like ours in California, use a "close in age" standard to decide to prosecute or not. An 18 year old having sex with a 17 year old who is really only a month younger is not prosecuted as statutory rape. Depending on the case, the prosecutors will use their discretion for teens from 16 to 20 as being essentially the same age, since they are in the same social situation (high school and community colleges, for instance). But any coupling where one is an adult, and there is more than 5 years difference in age, and the statutory rape laws come into effect.

12 is way too young, in my opinion. 12 year olds do not possess the maturity to make a decision as serious as that, and it should almost always be treated as statutory rape (I would recognize a "close in age" exception for the 12 and 14 year old who are playing "doctor").

Oh yeah, just so you know ... all those "sodomy" laws that you hear about usually outlawed sexual behaviour between man and wife, including oral sex and other pretty tame things to our minds today. We tend to think of sodomy as anal sex, but in reality, a man could be charged with sodomy for kissing his wife's breasts.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wstander @ Jul 21 2006, 07:53 AM) [snapback]289944[/snapback]</div>

Your first statement shows you have probably been down this road before. I have too, on a different issue (the "America is a Christian Nation" quote from the SupCt).

The problem is that there are statements describing the decision, and the decision. The statements describing the decision really have no legal impact; they are there solely for the Justices to express their opinion of why they decided they way they did. It is the decision itself that has meaning. Unless, of course, you want to pull a statement out of context and use it to "show" that the "Supreme Court" has "decided" this or that.

Its common for Justices to agree on a verdict for different reasons, and they explain that in their concurring decisions. The Justices who disagree with a verdict will sometimes write separate, and different, explanations of why they disagree.

 

There is nothing right about 12 years olds being able to be married. Somehow I would rather just see the age of 19 for just about everything. Perhaps the sex laws should get away from the actual age and focus on school years... In highschool you can do what ever in high school. If you are out of high school you cannot go back... That said... How old were Romeo and Juliet?

 

hmmm, I had a long bit here about how I think that many of the laws revolving around statutory rape end up doing little good, and doing quite a lot of damage. I erased it because it contained too much personal information, but I will say that my husband and I are very grateful that noone (especially my parents) took it upon themselves to 'save me' from him for the three years that I dated him before I turned 18. Oh, and school years would have run us into the same problems - he was an early admissions student at the college across from my high school.

Obviously, there need to be laws to protect our children and young adults. I just think that so much comes down to the situation that you either need to be very careful in writing the law, putting in appropriate levels and corresponding penalties and terminology, or give officers and judges more situational leeway in deciding if they should really put 'statutory rape' on a 16 year old having sex with his 15 year old girlfriend.



On a side note, GA passed a law so poorly put together that it's clearly not going to make it past judges, and that means they ended up doing jack to increase the protection from real threats. They planned to lump all their sex offenders together and held them to even more strict standards than Florida holds their child molesters. It makes Georgia look really bad - apparently not just people who were once consenting teenagers were affected, but so were the people with public urination and mooning charges. Even if you think that underage sex is questionable, you should not have to be treated as a sexual predator for that prank in college where you accidentally mooned the cop making his rounds.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(geologyrox @ Jul 22 2006, 07:12 AM) [snapback]290459[/snapback]</div>

There's a wide range of maturity in young people, and in societies with arranged marriages, any time after the onset of mensus for girls was considered nature's way of saying that person was ready for marriage and procreation. The men are usually older, in the 17 to 22 range. Anyone who knows 12 - 14 year old girls knows they can form attachments that seem almost pathological to the most hideous looking losers in the world (can you tell I'm the father of daughters?) But I wonder if that attachment is a mechanism to make a chosen mate ideal in the eyes of the young woman?

We have a romantic marriage ideal, and we "delay" the onset of marriage until the people are older. We also have an ideal for young people that they be the same age, but that's no guarantee of success in the marriage! I have a cousin who knew who she was going to marry when she was 13, and they secretely started dating then (he was 4 years older, a difference at that age that would have definately raised eyebrows). They were allowed to date openly when she was 15, but my uncle and aunt were very concerned. She has been married to that man for 25 years now in one of the best relationships I have seen.

That's a long way around of saying that I agree with you.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(geologyrox @ Jul 22 2006, 07:12 AM) [snapback]290459[/snapback]</div>

We often try to "get tough" on a situation with nonsense such as "zero tolerance" laws that lump everyone together into the same "offender" status. To get tough on sex offenders, as California has, we lump together those that rape and molest pre-pubescent boys and girls with those that engage in "lewd and lascivious behavior" ... which can be what used to be called "petting" ... with 14 year old girls. So an immature 18 year old who has a 13 year old girlfriend could end up on the same "Megan's List" website as a brutal rapist of young children. In California, the list does give you the conviction, but most people don't understand how little has to happen between an adult and a child under the age of consent (16, I think) for it to be "lewd and lascivious". "Passionate" kissing could qualify.

I don't have any sympathy for someone who violates trust, or uses a power relationship to coerce a younger person. But not all of those 18 - 13 relationships are that way. Right now, I think the choice of whether to throw the book at someone or not rests solely with the prosecutor, and often that is a function of election cycles, publicity about the case, or "proving a point" rather than looking at the individual case.

 

I agree that this particular case was procedure and not substance, but Daniel and others contention that all appelate decisions flow from the bedrock of procedure is naive.

The supreme court decisions surrounding slavery are the best examples I can think of. Those justices that found it intolerable voted against it, regardless of the procedural question up for review. Those justices that had less personal oppostion to slavery focused on the procedural question, or took refuge in the procedure. Would the shrub's 'strict constitutionalist' appointees uphold slavery if they were transported back to that era to sit on the bench ? We'll never know because they are too squirrely to answer, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say no.

There is enough wiggle room in procedural law and the constitution for judges to push their personal agendas. As it should be, to allow for the intent, as well as the letter of the law. Pleading otherwise is a cop-out.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jul 22 2006, 01:51 PM) [snapback]290568[/snapback]</div>

I think this gets hard when you leave it up to judgement call like this because in a good 70 year relationship, I guess we'd all be willing to overlook the whole 18-13 thing after time has proven it out.

In this day and age of 18-13, typically the deal lasts anywhere from 15 minutes to a few months. At the end of that, the seperation between stat-rape of a child, and 'love affair' rests on whom? The girl is upset so she cries foul and now the boy gets pinned with a pretty nasty stat-rape penalty flag?

What about 32-13? That could also turn into a 50 year loving relationship. Maybe even after she's 25, people could pretty much shrug it off as ok.. but, when the thing goes sour at 33-14, what does the court do with that 1 year of mutual relationship? Is that now a slam dunk stat-rape of a child?

Is there any room in society left for "If he loves her, he will wait for her".... 18-13 in an actual loving relationship only puts off the gig until 23-18. At 23-18, they are both so much more ready to bring the relationship to marriage and sexual union.

If the laws were black and white, would that be enough incentive for 18-13 to wait for 23-18 in order to properly enjoy the marriage because if they do get caught, or if the relationship goes sour and now she's a victim rather than a partner, he knows he's up the creek. He knows he can't 'go there' because the risks are too great.

The whole thing comes down to the fact that people are not expected to take personal responsibility for their actions anymore. An 18 year old doesn't get into a friendship with a very young girl thinking of the consequences later if he happens to fulfill his urgings... In today's day and age, he basically does what he wants and doesn't think about ramifications, and society tries to pad the fall so that he doesn't have to suffer any consequences for his actions. Seeing that the last guy got away with it, the next 18 year old has no fear of doing the same thing and in the end, it's becomming a problem.

I can't even think of an explaination for a 32-12 situation, it's just happening and in my opinnion this whole thing should have some pretty heavy laws around it.

A down-side to having a law that states "Over 15 = OK", "Under 15 = Jail" would seem to put a target on girls as of their 15th birthday. Pretty soon the mentality is "You're legal now"..

Who designed the human body anyhow? What guidelines and expectations did the designer have for it, and what happens if you play by those rules?

 

The same designer of the dog, the monkey, and the ant. Let us know what conclusions the study of those other animals leads you to