Doug Jones Wins Bama

[JoshuaIsLord]

So you would call someone who had sex with a 17-year old a “child molester”?

Yes, there is one exception to the Age of Consent of 16 in Alabama. When it involves anyone in the teaching profession, that age of consent is raised to age 19.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The word I have a problem with is “child” not “molestation”. A 14-year old is not a “child” they are a young-adult or possibly an adolescent. Biologically speaking, a child is a human being between birth and puberty.

In conversational language child can refer to both someone that hasn’t experienced puberty yet or a person that is not yet at some age (among some other usages, but limiting consideration to these two for now). If you want to talk about how the law is applied you might do better to stick with the term “minor.” The usage of the word “child” in every day language is less constrained and you might find it harder to prescribe its usage. Speaking to a friend of mine (she is an attorney) she tells me that generally a defendant below a certain age would be termed “juvenile” and a victim below 18 is a “minor.” They only use the term “child” in reference to parentage. This may be different where you live.

While the legal and lay person language is different, I suspect that local values may have some influence on the law and the law may have some influence on the local values.

So you would call someone who had sex with a 17-year old a “child molester”?

Conversationally someone might depending on the age of the other person.

To make a legal classification of that scenario more information would be needed such as the age of the other person and the state in which sex took place. Federal law covers those that are up to 16 years old. Once 17 the federal law no longer covers the scenario. The states in which that scenario would be most severe are California, Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, Utah, North Dakota, Michigan, Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida. In all of these states the age of consent is 18. If such an act occurred there then it could be called a statutory rape.

 

[F_Marturana]

No. Taking her into his house to sexually abuse her is a felony.

 

[ProVobis]

The leadership has already managed to increase Medicare premiums (paid by the beneficiaries 65 and over) by about 20%. It had been steady for about 4 years due to the law that had tied SS increases (there were none) with Medicare premiums.

 

[ChunkMonk]

Well that is insane. Sorry, but no right-minded person would call sex with a seventeen year old “child molestation”.

No. Taking her into his house to sexually abuse her is a felony.

Can you cite the relevant legal code for that? I’m not saying I disbelieve you but from what I researched it was a Class A misdemeanor.

Conversationally someone might depending on the age of the other person.

Anyone who called a man having sex with a 17-year old a “child molester” needs to have their brain checked.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Anyone who called a man having sex with a 17-year old a “child molester” needs to have their brain checked.

It wouldn’t be an indication of the state of their brain. It’s only an indication of their perspective. If you were looking for something less subjective from which to argue you’d have to stick with how such an action is treated legally, not how people otherwise view and converse about it.

 

[ChunkMonk]

The law distinguishes between sex with a 17-year old and sex with a 7-year old. So do psychologists. So does pretty much every normal human being.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The law distinguishes between sex with a 17-year old and sex with a 7-year old.

If you want to talk about the legal classifications I would advise sticking with the legal language. I don’t think conflating the legal and conversational language will accomplish much.

 

[Teek]

Not that I suggest you go around asking about this (as it might cause people to raise questions about you) but if you could ask a large number of people a question on how they would label sexual touching of a person below the age of consent I don’t think they are going to spend a lot of time qualifying the age of the victim to choose the correct technical term for it.

You don’t have to go around asking. We are talking about accusations of real crimes that are defined under certain terms. They are technical terms—is that a bad thing? To be precise in your use of language?

The accurate use of those terms is somehow bad?

Sexual assault on ANYONE, male, female, adult, minor, child—all crimes. But all of those crimes are not identical. They carry different names, different sentences.

All wrong. But if you are going to accuse someone of the wrong one, yes, it matters.

Think about other crimes: petty theft, grand theft, grand theft auto. Homicide, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter.

We have these distinctions because the legal categories for these crimes exist.

If someone asked me, I would most certainly qualify the age of the victim and the circumstances out of respect for the victim. I would not want to use their experience for personal argument value to forward an agenda by exaggeration, and I would not want to minimize their experience by over generalizing. I would respect that person enough to care enough to be precise.

I think it matters to the victim very much what actually happened, and also that what actually happened is heard and taken seriously.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

You don’t have to go around asking. We are talking about accusations of real crimes that are defined under certain terms. They are technical terms—is that a bad thing? To be precise in your use of language?

As I said before, if the discussion is about the legal classifications than the legal language is best. But Moore isn’t facing legal charges. He was subject to public opinion.

If someone asked me, I would most certainly qualify the age of the victim and the circumstances out of respect for the victim.

As far as I’ve seen the ages of the women at the time that alleged events occurred have been presented and not misrepresented. Have you seen/heard otherwise?

 

[sallybutler]

I am getting to the point where I don’t care how old the girls were (note that I did not use the word women), they were neither his spouse nor his fiancee, so this behavior was not Christian, and coming from an avowed Christian, unacceptable.

Also, as a Catholic, I believe that repentance goes hand in hand with forgiveness. So for those that say it doesn’t matter because he has been forgiven, it doesn’t sound like he has repented of his behavior (after all, he asked their mother’s permissions).

 

[Ridgerunner]

Sorry, I was mixing this up with Trump’s exaggerated claims from the campaign. Straight from the BLS website:

“Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers”

Basically those who are unemployed, underemployed, or people with irregular income.

Which is not what you said earlier. Meaning no offense, you included disabled and retired people. They’re not counted in U-6.

The positive job picture and growing economy is something he inherited from Obama…vs Obama inheriting the financial crash of 2008. Thing is the US is on one of it’s greatest runs of economic growth, that started a long time ago well within Obama’s terms. So, I’m not buying that this “Trump” effect is anything.

I’ll give this to Obama. He inherited a deep recession caused by a financial crisis. But he never succeeded in truly uncoiling the spring because he scared small employers (the biggest employer taken together nationally) to death. Community bankers too. I don’t know how many of either of those you know. I know a lot of both.

Put simply, Trump is the “not Obama” president. Liberals can think whatever they want about his tweets, his past or his manners. But among small business people, he’s just the guy who won’t come up with some new radical surprise that will make it foolish to have done forward investing.

The five trillion or so that the market has gone up since Trump was elected is just an uncoiling of the spring that should have uncoiled long ago. It’s not “fake dollars” ginned up by the Fed to reward the “carry trade”. It’s real money that has been sitting on the sidelines, owned by people who were afraid to invest it. It remains to be seen whether the relaxation will seem sufficient to small business people to induce them to invest in hardware, software, land, and employees. Repealing Dodd-Frank might not happen, but doing so will give small businesses better access to capital.

Impeach Trump, which I know the Dems want to do, and we’ll all revisit March, 2009.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Anyone who called a man having sex with a 17-year old a “child molester” needs to have their brain checked.

When I was a young man in college, any girl under the age of 18 was termed “jail bait”. At one time, I had three girlfriends simultaneously. One of them was 17, but I didn’t know it at first. I dropped her like a bad habit when she told me her age. You didn’t actually have to do anything with a “jail bait” girl to get in trouble. You only had to create the perception that you might be. Too bad too. She was really pretty. But then, there were still the other two, so it wasn’t the end of the world.

If Moore really did canoodle with a 14-year-old (and I’m not sure he did) then he was dumber at age 32 than I was at age 20.

I can just imagine feminist reaction to the above. Was that a rock that just came through my window?

 

[sallybutler]

Why would anyone throw a rock? I remember when jail bait was an important concept. I used it to get guys to leave me alone.

 

[Teek]

As far as I’ve seen the ages of the women at the time that alleged events occurred have been presented and not misrepresented. Have you seen/heard otherwise?

That was in a response to a post saying no one is going to worry about those things.

I was not referring to the alleged events at all, because I don’t know any of the people involved and the reporting was all over the map so you could believe it was all made up, or that he was a serious threat to all of woman kind under the age of 30, or any position between the two. I have no way to tell what is going on.

If he did or if he didn’t it is tragic—either what he did to them or what was done to him.

God save us all.

 

[ProVobis]

If the markets continue to go up in spite of rising interest rates, it will be irrational exuberance revisited.

 

[ChunkMonk]

I am getting to the point where I don’t care how old the girls were (note that I did not use the word women), they were neither his spouse nor his fiancee, so this behavior was not Christian, and coming from an avowed Christian, unacceptable.

I can respect that. I actually wish we had more people who felt that way.

But supproting abortion is worse than having pre-marital sex. So anyone using this logic would have to equally avoid voting for anyone who supports abortion.

One of them was 17, but I didn’t know it at first.

There is simply no way you could not have known that. Because apparently only a child molester pedophile could possibly be attracted to a 17-year old. That’s a fact. Not a single one of these people would EVER find a sexually-mature adult attractive as long as she was below the age of an arbitrary, modern standard. Biology shmiology.

 

[JoshuaIsLord]

Well that is insane. Sorry, but no right-minded person would call sex with a seventeen year old “child molestation”.

The Alabama code § 13A-6-81 defines one degrees of the crime school employee engaging in a sex act or deviant sexual intercourse with a student under the age of 19, each with associated punishments. The degree of the crime depends on the specifics of the crime committed, with higher degrees of the charge generally receiving harsher punishments.

Here is the actual citation:

Section 13A-6-81
School employee engaging in a sex act with a student under the age of 19 years.
(a) A person commits the crime of a school employee engaging in a sex act with a student under the age of 19 years if he or she is a school employee and engages in sexual intercourse as defined by Section 13A-6-60(1) or deviant sexual intercourse as defined by 13A-6-60(2) with a student, regardless of whether the student is male or female. Consent is not a defense to a charge under this section.

(b) The crime of a school employee engaging in a sex act with a student is a Class B felony.

(Act 2010-497, p. 766, §1; Act 2016-354, §2.)

http://alisondb.legislature.state.al.us/alison/codeofalabama/1975/13A-6-81.htm

 

[HarryStotle]

Taking a “morning after” pill may or may not be a sin, but I am pretty sure that the sin is not murder.

And “I am pretty sure” that it is at least culpable homicide since each and every one of us in the position to even think about what is or is not murder began from that very same origin. To intentionally end the life of an individual human being, once conceived, is by all reasonable assessments, killing that innocent human being for no just cause. Minimally, it is homicide. Spin it any way you like, but recognize that it is mocking God who created that life.

That a moral agent has difficulty prioritizing life above other goods puts into question their bona fides regarding their capacity to properly evaluate the relative value of those other goods.

Modern human beings, even those “on the cusp of [their] seventh decade” have become exceedingly professional at rationalizing their moral limitations and turning those limitations into purported virtues. I am not just “pretty sure,” but certain that God will not be mocked by our willingness to retune moral reality to our current set of societally sanctioned whims and personal aspirations.

 

[F_Marturana]

The morning after pill isn’t the same thing as RU 486, which is actually an abortion pill.

There are licit uses of emergency contraception for example after rape when a woman isn’t already pregnant and hasn’t yet ovulated.