Adultery vs Drugs, Prostitution, Assisted Suicide and Child Pornography
In the US and most other western nations, adultery has been decriminalized and you would probably be viewed as some kind of a far right reactionary or a religious extremist if you were to argue that it should be made illegal again. By contrast, the Possession of Drugs, the buying and selling of sex, selling someone euthanasia drugs so they can peacefully commit suicide, and having child porn on your computer is usually still illegal in most countries. I think that there is actually a stronger case to be made for making adultery illegal than the cases for making the other stuff I mentioned illegal. That isn’t to say that I think adultery should be illegal rather I think we either have to make the stuff I mentioned legal or make adultery illegal if we want our laws to make sense.
I’ll start by mentioning that I define adultery to be a situation where a member of a romantic couple in a closed relationship, whether married or unmarried, decides to have sexual contact with another person without consent from their partner. When understood in this manner, it seems that adultery produces obvious harm to lots of people and it’s something that I think even significantly affects the everyday life of your average person. I think that Drugs, Prostitution, Assisted Suicide, and Child Porn produce more speculative types of harms that only affect a very small or fairly small group of people. I bet a lot of people on this forum have been cheated on and probably have been greatly affected by the event. By contrast, I don’t think even a single member of this forum ever seriously impacted by someone else choosing to buy or sell sex or someone choosing to watch child porn. There might be a few people here that were impacted by people doing drugs and people committing suicide but I think that’s still more rare than someone being affected by their SO cheating on them.
In addition, I think there is a much stronger case to be made for people having a right to die or a right to do drugs than there is for people having a right to violate an agreement that they made with their SO not have sexual contact with another person. After all, if you want to sleep with other people than why don’t you either breakup or divorce your partner or get into an open relationship or fwb relationship or just stay single? If one has agreed to fidelity than I don’t see how one can complain about there being legal consequences for violating an agreement that you made in the first place.
Another thing that I think makes the case for making adultery illegal more compelling is that a lack of legal recourse often leads disgruntled individuals to take matters in their own hands and engage in vigilante justice. I think a big reason why we created laws in the first place is to curtail vigilante justice and the chaos that it brings so we can live in a peaceful society. Adultery has quite a high level of vengefulness that comes with it. The likelihood of any given partner taking revenge against their partner after they catch them cheating is actually fairly high it seems. I hear about it all the time. We often even encourage such vengefulness. By contrast, I think few people are motivated to take revenge against drug users or prostitution clients or prostitutes or even someone who provided euthanasia drugs to their loved ones or someone that watches child porn. This is because those activities either do not concern them or they might feel like revenge isn’t appropriate even if it does concern them. You do have vigilantes that go after pedophiles but I think they overwhelmingly prefer to target child rapists or molesters instead of just some guy watching child porn.
I encourage you all to write objections to my OP if you have any. I tried to keep it short so I didn’t mention everything to be said about the topic. On a final note, I want to mention that I think there is a rather bad history regarding adultery being illegal where women were charged with it a lot more often than men were. I don’t think this is how adultery laws should work and laws in general are only as good as how they are implemented. Men should really be charged more often with adultery since I think they are more likely to cheat. Though, I think when women cheat it can sometimes be really catastrophic because of the possibility of paternity fraud but I think there should be a separate law for that anyways.
I’ll start by mentioning that I define adultery to be a situation where a member of a romantic couple in a closed relationship, whether married or unmarried, decides to have sexual contact with another person without consent from their partner. When understood in this manner, it seems that adultery produces obvious harm to lots of people and it’s something that I think even significantly affects the everyday life of your average person. I think that Drugs, Prostitution, Assisted Suicide, and Child Porn produce more speculative types of harms that only affect a very small or fairly small group of people. I bet a lot of people on this forum have been cheated on and probably have been greatly affected by the event. By contrast, I don’t think even a single member of this forum ever seriously impacted by someone else choosing to buy or sell sex or someone choosing to watch child porn. There might be a few people here that were impacted by people doing drugs and people committing suicide but I think that’s still more rare than someone being affected by their SO cheating on them.
In addition, I think there is a much stronger case to be made for people having a right to die or a right to do drugs than there is for people having a right to violate an agreement that they made with their SO not have sexual contact with another person. After all, if you want to sleep with other people than why don’t you either breakup or divorce your partner or get into an open relationship or fwb relationship or just stay single? If one has agreed to fidelity than I don’t see how one can complain about there being legal consequences for violating an agreement that you made in the first place.
Another thing that I think makes the case for making adultery illegal more compelling is that a lack of legal recourse often leads disgruntled individuals to take matters in their own hands and engage in vigilante justice. I think a big reason why we created laws in the first place is to curtail vigilante justice and the chaos that it brings so we can live in a peaceful society. Adultery has quite a high level of vengefulness that comes with it. The likelihood of any given partner taking revenge against their partner after they catch them cheating is actually fairly high it seems. I hear about it all the time. We often even encourage such vengefulness. By contrast, I think few people are motivated to take revenge against drug users or prostitution clients or prostitutes or even someone who provided euthanasia drugs to their loved ones or someone that watches child porn. This is because those activities either do not concern them or they might feel like revenge isn’t appropriate even if it does concern them. You do have vigilantes that go after pedophiles but I think they overwhelmingly prefer to target child rapists or molesters instead of just some guy watching child porn.
I encourage you all to write objections to my OP if you have any. I tried to keep it short so I didn’t mention everything to be said about the topic. On a final note, I want to mention that I think there is a rather bad history regarding adultery being illegal where women were charged with it a lot more often than men were. I don’t think this is how adultery laws should work and laws in general are only as good as how they are implemented. Men should really be charged more often with adultery since I think they are more likely to cheat. Though, I think when women cheat it can sometimes be really catastrophic because of the possibility of paternity fraud but I think there should be a separate law for that anyways.
Comments (82)
Visual child pornography - videos or photographs - requires that children engage in sex acts. It is not likely that any child would do that unless coerced. In most places, children do not have the ability to give consent. Even if there is no legal restriction, it's just plain wrong. Children are among the most vulnerable of us. They deserve to be protected. Child pornography cannot be made without abusing and exploiting children.
It is my understanding that written or drawn child pornography is not illegal in most places. That would make sense given the rationale described above.
Could you actually put some numbers on this for me, even if it's a guesstimate? ...also, are you going for raw counts here, or severity of the impacts?
People that possess or watch child porn of any kind do not necessarily play a causal role in the creation of that content though. It is only if they produce it or distribute it or pay for it then I think one can argue that they have actually seriously contributed to the abuse of children. Otherwise, I think that content would exist even if one particular person who watches child porn didn’t watch child porn. In contrast, if one partner gets caught cheating on their romantic partner then there doesn’t seem to be any question that this partner would have prevented the suffering that his infidelity has caused to his partner if he decided not to cheat. So, I think the causal relationship to harm is more clear and obvious here.
You have a good point here. The severity of having family members do drugs or commit suicide might be more severe. Though, there is another factor that I considered here as well and that was whether or not a person has a right to do drugs or commit suicide. I think it’s more reasonable to assert that a person has a right to do drugs or commit suicide because they never really made an agreement not to do those things while a cheater has made an agreement not to cheat by choosing to have a monogamous committed relationship. Also, in regards to assisted suicide, I think it’s also more controversial to blame a person that provides euthanasia drugs to help a person commit suicide for that suicide as this person only played a partial causal role here. I think the person that actually went through with the suicide is most appropriate person to blame if someone really insisted that suicide is blameworthy. I think this kind of factor is ultimately my most important point here as I think we can accept that drugs and suicide produce a comparably bad outcome to adultery but there is at least more reasons to defend the actions of drug users and suicide assistants.
If no one had child pornography on their computers, child pornography would come to an end for practical purposes. Any transaction with a financial component contributes to the production of the pornography and, therefore, the abuse of children. How would someone get the pornography if there were not a financial transaction of some sort?
Consider this legal rule or principle: A free state (i.e. open society) shall not prohibit victimless consensual conduct except in cases where such conduct is materially supported by prohibited criminal acts or enterprises. When applied to OP
e.g. categories
• adultery – victimless ...
• use, possession or sale^ of drugs – victimless ...
• sale^ of euthanizing drugs – victimless ...
• sale^ of consensual sex acts – victimless ...
• (making / possession / distribution / sale^ of) child pornography – material support by victimization e.g. child sexual abuse, molestation or worse ...
^(sale includes both ends of transaction)
Is @TheHedoMinimalist a priest?
Well, one could scam or hack someone that has child porn. But, most porn is free on the Internet right now because it is funded by scam advertising. I don’t know if that’s a thing for child porn as well but if it is then I don’t think that a person who downloads child porn and doesn’t fall for scam advertisement would be doing anything to help the creators of child porn profit. So, I’m not seeing how they actually would play a causal role in creating the content. Another non-financial way that someone might get child porn is if it is free distributed by a pedophile that wants to help other pedophiles out. There are pro-pedophilia political advocacy groups out there such as the North American Man/Boy Love Association. It wouldn’t surprise me if they like to freely hand out child porn to their members or supporters.
I don’t think that adultery is victimless. I think it obviously harms the person who gets cheated on and it causes them a great deal of emotional distress. I don’t think any of those activities are completely victimless though. Drugs and Suicide seem to harm the family members of the person that engages in them. Prostitution could enable adultery and that could harm the spouse of the prostitution client.
Well I wasn't going for a point; I was just trying to wrap my head around the metric being used. I get that monogamous relationships involve an agreement; but broken agreements are not the only moral considerations. I'm not sure I agree that if Bob pinky promises to buy Jane ice cream next week if Jane buys him some this week but doesn't, that Bob in breaking this promise is more in the wrong than if he stole ice cream from Jane.
So I'm not buying the agreement versus none aspect plays a real role here. Death and exploitation for example are big deals; we don't need broken agreements to make them so.
I agree that there being an agreement is not the only moral consideration. I think that cheating is quite harmful to people and I think that harm cannot be excused because you made an agreement not to cause that harm.
I'm embarrassed to even have to make this argument. Web pages usually get paid by advertisers based on how many people click on their web pages. If you go to a porn website, you are contributing financially to the site's owner. You are helping to make it financially worthwhile for people to sexually abuse children.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
So, someone sexually abuses a child and makes a film of it. Then he says "Hey, THM, would you like a copy of the video?" You say "sure" and download and watch it. Is it your position that you do not share any responsibility for the abuse of that child?
I'm not talking about excusing the harm; I'm talking about comparing it to harms that do not involve agreement. It's breaking an agreement to cheat in a monogamous relationship, but it's not breaking an agreement to take photos of a child in a shower without their knowledge and share it online. We can't use the fact of agreement versus not to compare the latter to the former (I mean we can, but it doesn't seem to properly compare using this metric).
FYI, this is just an example of agreement breaking versus exploitation. Also, judging from the topic, this appears to be the point as I understand it... to compare cheating to drug use/prostitution/suicide/child pornography.
I did not list all the differences between these things in the OP because I wasn’t looking to write an essay on the topic lol. I gave you 4 paragraphs to work with in my OP. I’d be surprised if you actually read the whole thing much less agree to read a much longer analysis that I might have on the topic. Personally, I think a good OP is one that gives a very basic and rudimentary version of an argument or critique and then allows people that want to respond to the OP to contribute further. It’s supposed to promote conversation and not bog people down reading your OP. So, I want to pass the question off to you. What do you think is the difference between adultery and the other things that I have mentioned? You don’t have to give me a full list but it would help if you can provide a notable example or something.
Quoting tim wood
By adultery, I meant cheating in general. I think it matters much if it occurs between a married or unmarried couple. Yes, we can do the bounty payments though I think police can just investigate suspicions just as they would with any other crime.
I want to clarify that I was specifically talking about the possession of child porn as opposed to the production of child porn. I agree that taking a video of a child taking a shower is worse than adultery. I just don’t think that having a copy of that video of your computer is worse than adultery. I think there is a quite big difference between producing child porn and simply watching it.
Ok, you have a point. The average person who watches child porn might give a small amount of profit to the producer. I still think that cheating causes way more harm though. I know countless of people that have been cheated on and it causes quite a great deal of emotional devastation. It might not be as much emotional devastation as what child abuse causes but I think you should consider that the harm produced by cheating is solely caused by the cheater. In contrast, a single person that consumes child porn produces a very minuscule percentage of cause of the child being abused. The producer and distributor of that content is the primary party responsible for the abuse and the audience of the porn only contributes in a minuscule way unless you add them all up as a collective.
Quoting T Clark
If someone doesn’t play a causal role in the creation of the video and the video would have existed even if that person was never interested in child porn then I don’t understand how it would make sense to say that this person is responsible for abusing a child that would have been abused regardlessly. I guess you can argue that there’s some probability that the person who made the video specifically made it for that person but that’s kinda speculative. I think it really comes down to the disgust that people have towards pedophiles and I understand. They are pretty disgusting people. It’s like a person that likes to eat his own feces or a person that fantasizes about torturing animals. There’s just something gross about it.
Nonetheless, I would appreciate if you can provide me with an argument for why you do think that watching child porn that you got for free still makes someone somehow responsible for the abuse if the abuse would taken place regardless. I think we normally wouldn’t say that someone is responsible if the issue was less emotionally charged than child porn. For example, suppose that someone had robbed a jewelry store a long time ago and there were a few pieces of jewelry that they wanted to give me as a present. If jewelry store is already out of business and the jewelry can longer be returned then it seems that it would be perfectly acceptable for me to take the stolen jewelry even if I knew they were stolen. Just as you cannot take back the jewelry to a store that no longer exists, you also cannot take back the child abuse that might have occurred in the past. So, what is the difference between those cases then?
I’m not sure if you are responding to my OP or to my previous reply to your comment. It would be helpful if you can quote the passage in question
But if you're going to use this argument:
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
...then possession could enable production and that could harm the child being exploited, and:
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
...that is worse than adultery.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Well here, the analog would be to prostitution; though, more specifically, in this case we've qualified this to the level of possession of child pornography specifically made via exploitation of children, versus just generic prostitution, so this analogy isn't quite analogous. To make it so, we should qualify the prostitution... something along the lines of, prostitution specifically where the prostitute knowingly caters to a person involved in a monogamous relationship. That analog being made, given that exploitation is worse than adultery, presumably possession of such child pornography should be worse than prostitution.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I'm sorry to be harsh. I think your position is morally repugnant. Hurting children is the worst thing anyone can do. To participate in any way is loathsome. I'm not going to comment any more.
Ok, I understand
I agree that possession of child porn is worse than prostitution. I actually don’t think that prostitution is really that bad though. Yes it can enable adultery but I think that’s a pretty minor downside since it isn’t adultery and I think it only plays a small causal role in any given instance of adultery that it causes. If some guy decides to cheat on his wife with a prostitute, I think that prostitute is far less responsible for that adultery than the guy himself is. Him cheating on his wife is probably not solely dependent on the existence of that given prostitute or even the existence of prostitution in general. He probably would have found a way to cheat regardless. That prostitute that helped him and prostitution only made things somewhat more convenient for him. I think that just doesn’t give us too much reason to be strongly opposed to prostitution. I also think there are a lot of social benefits to prostitution that are often overlooked and under-respected. Though, I won’t go into that rabbit hole unless you really want me to.
I think I was mostly talking about legality of the issues at question in my OP especially regarding the 4th paragraph of my OP here:
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
This was meant to be like a Hobbesian contractarian sort of argument that appeals to the idea that the purpose of law is to preserve social peace and minimize vigilante violence that often took place before the law and the government was there to resolve disputes. Basically, what I was trying to say is that people tend to take revenge against their cheating partners and many people think it’s understandable for them to do so. Ideally, people shouldn’t have to resort to revenge to protect their honor and dignity in these situations. I’m suggesting that maybe it is quite appropriate to have the law and the government punish cheaters on the behalf of their partners so that we can have a civilized means of preserving the dignity of the victim rather than an uncivilized means of revenge which tends to characterized by unlawful vandalism and violence. Though, I personally don’t necessarily think that we should make adultery illegal but I think it has more compelling arguments than the arguments for making prostitution, drugs, assisted suicide, and maybe even possession of child porn illegal.
The reason adultery is decriminlized has to do with the retreat of moralim as a basis for criminal sanctions and with the fact that adultery is a private wrong. The question should not be whether adultery is morally right or wrong and therefore warrants being criminalized, but whether legally it makes sense to combat this wrong through criminal law. Criminal law signals the intervention of the state, but why would the state intervene in a matter that is purely private? It simply does not have the dimension to become a state issue.
That is different from child pornography, because the state protects individuals who do not have the power to protect themselves. (That is why sexual abuse of a patient is a criminal matter for instance and sex with a minor is even if it is consensual). Drug adiction is a problem for the state because it destabilizes pubic order (at least that is the argument for drug related prosecution). Euthanasia is decriminlized uner certain condditions in the Netherlands, but the case may be made that it should be a matter of state interest because it has the monopoly of violence and euthanasia undermines that monopoly. Prohibiting suicide is I think pointless from a criminal law perspective.
Adultery simply does not carry that kindd of importance as a matter for the state to intervene in. State intervention is also an infringement of privacy, the private space becomes public so I think there are good legal grounds for restriction of state intervention in this domain. Adultery might be a civil wrong, because the cheated partner is damaged, but I do not see any role for criminal law.
The OP seems to consider that moral wrongs should be dealt with by criminal law, but that assumption is false.
Okay, but remember, we had to qualify prostitution to make this analogous. We're not just talking prostitution any more; it's prostitution where the prostitute is knowingly having sex with a person involved in a monogamous relationship.
If we qualify generic consensual sex to the same level, we get the same problem; the fact that prostitution involves an exchange of wealth does not seem to be a relevant factor here.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I disagree. To give these names, let's say P is the prostitute; J is the client, and C is J's monogamous partner. It is the consensual sex between P and J that constitutes the cheating. To the degree that C is harmed, C is harmed by J breaking the monogamous agreement. The asymmetry here is in the fact that P is not a party to said agreement. So when it comes to breaking the agreement, P is not responsible, given P is not a party to the agreement. But when it comes to causing harm to C, P is just as responsible for causing this harm to C as J is. I can see a qualitative assessment of this as P being less responsible, but I cannot see a reasonable assessment where P is far less responsible.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I don't see the relevance of this. P is responsible for causing harm to C by virtue of the fact that P wantonly and knowingly consents with J to commit the act that causes the harm. Were P not to consent, P would not be responsible. Whatever J might do in this case with Q were P to refuse consent appears to be irrelevant to me.
I was actually only talking about people who have possession of child porn and viewing child porn in my OP. I agree that production of child pornography is far worse than adultery. I’m just not convinced that merely watching child porn produces more harm than adultery. Do you think that someone having child porn on their computer constitutes a legal harm also or were you only talking about the people that produce and distribute the stuff?
I want to clarify that I was only talking about people that watch child porn in my OP rather than those that actually produce the content. It doesn’t seem to me that your point here applies to people that just watch the stuff and have it on their computer.
Quoting Tobias
I think adultery also destabilizes public order. I think the lack of legal persecution of people that cheat leads partners that have been cheated on to feel like they must seek justice for themselves and that results in them trying to take revenge against the person that cheated on them. This is often even celebrated by people who hear of such revenge tales and I think this sort of thing helps promote the narrative that vigilante justice is good and that you can’t rely on the law to stand up for your dignity. If we had laws against adultery, then I think we can help civilize the process of the victim of adultery getting the justice that they might indeed deserve to have. Though, I do think there are strong arguments against making adultery illegal too. I just think that there is a stronger case for making adultery illegal than there is for making drugs illegal.
Another potential way that adultery destabilizes our society is by the way it potentially helps destabilize our families and family structures. Adultery often leads to divorce and that tends to weaken family bonds. Family bonds are often understood as the staple of our overall social bonds. It’s not clear if we can have a functioning society with too many dysfunctional families. I think adultery helps create dysfunctional families.
Quoting Tobias
I wouldn’t consider selling euthanasia drugs to be violence though. According to the first online dictionary that I have consulted, violence is “behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury”. It appears to me that there is no physical force exerted by a euthanasia drug and thus it isn’t violence. I would say violence is more akin to hitting, cutting, or shooting projectiles at someone. It usually causes suffering and only sometimes death. Euthanasia typically causes death with no suffering.
Quoting Tobias
I’m actually more sympathetic to just making all the stuff I mentioned legal rather than making adultery illegal. I’m quite sympathetic towards social libertarian causes. Though, I was merely trying to talk about the ways in which I think that our laws are inconsistent and based on vague principles.
Ok, I would like to present an analogous case to you as an argument for I think it makes sense to think that P is far less responsible for the harm caused to C. Suppose that T stole some trade secrets from Company B that he used to work for. He sold those trade secrets to Company F. Company F knows that he violated his agreement and Company F knows that this will harm Company B. Nonetheless, I think it makes sense to say that Company F is far less responsible for the harm caused to Company B than T is. I think this is precisely because it is T that had an agreement with Company B to not sell those trade secrets and Company F had no such agreement. Because of this, Company B can only sue T for violating the agreement but they cannot sue Company F for buying the trade secrets regardless if they knew that T was violating the law. I think this is how the law should be too.
I think this case that I had presented is analogous to the case that you have presented with P, J, and C. I can’t think of any ways that it is disanalogous but I’d love to know if you see anything relevant that is not analogous between the 2 cases.
Quoting InPitzotl
I think the existence of Q isn’t irrelevant here. I think it actually changes the causality of the harm caused to C. I would argue that, in order P to have caused harm to C, it has to be the case that the relevant harm to C would have not have occurred had P not had sex with J. If it’s extremely likely that it would have occurred regardless then I think the primary causal force for harm caused to C is J’s motivation and intention to cheat. If J had no intention of cheating on C then the harm caused to C would have not occurred. By contrast, P refusing to serve J only seems to have a minuscule chance of changing the ultimate outcome regarding C being harmed by J cheating on her. To use another analogous example, imagine that you had a vicious drug lord that was planning to set your car on fire and it’s extremely unlikely that you would be able to stop him so you just accepted your fate. I hear about this and I decide that I want to set your car on fire instead because I think it would be fun. The drug lord shows up and sees me set the car on fire and he just smiles and sees someone already did his chore and decides to leave. Would you really be mad at me for burning your car down in this scenario? I would imagine that you probably wouldn’t care because you know that the drug lord would have done it anyways and I only decided to burn it down because I knew you were screwed regardless. I think the situation with P, Q, J, and C is kinda analogous.
Your analogy is missing a key ingredient from the scenario... company F bought those trade secrets from T knowing that they were trade secrets for Company B (i.e., F must commit the act wantonly to be analogous).
Nope. Company F is not "far less" responsible than T.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I'm not sure where you're getting this from. IANAL, but knowingly buying stolen trade secrets is clearly a crime in the US (arbitrarily chosen because you didn't specify, and that's where I live):
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
This is in no way analogous, and I don't know how to fix this one. You're completely missing two consensual parties wantonly and knowingly committing an action that causes harm to a third party; we simply have a drug lord planning an arson and you committing one. The drug lord is culpable for planning arson in this scenario, and you are culpable of committing one. My resignment to fate in this scenario is obviously compelled, and irrelevant. My emotional reaction is also irrelevant.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
There's something broken in your imagination then. It sounds like you're fishing for a weird sort of but-for theory that I quite simply do not subscribe to. At the heart of this is a very simple idea... you are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of actions you commit.
It does, As 180 pointed out, consumers keep demand running for the production of it. Therefore, in order to decrease demand it is criminalized. You confuse questions of criminalization with questions of morality. By an large the same logic applies to money laundering. Crime also runs in chains.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Point A. above should be supported by research. The law simply has no business protecting your dignity. When you engage in a personal relationship, like love is, we keep it personal. As far as I know the social structure, economy and trade are not undermined by the decriminalization of adultery. Add to that that it is very difficult to enforce. People have all sorts of relationships in this day and age. Mind you that a crime is a crime regardless of someone actually pressing charges, so all kinds of alternative lifestyles would be criminalized. Criminal law is a tool that exact vengenance, but not on a personal level, but on the level that a good worthy of protection by the state is at issue. A person feeling cheated simply does not make the cut.
That brings me to the second point, point B, the protection of the family structure. Well in some countries, for instance Turkey, that was used as a reason to raise the possibility to recriminalize adultery. Howwever, that kind of moralism is outdated. Moreover the cure is worse than the disease, your love life becomes an issue of intervention by the state. Many peope rightly so want the state out of their bedroom.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
And as I tell my studenst, consulting a dictionary to solve legal questions is usually pretty pointless. On your definitions psychological violence is not violence, but legally it is. The monopoly of violence entails that killing or the methos of killing fall under state jurisdiction. The selling of suicide drugs is still something else than actively assisting suicide, but what you do providing the equipment to people to commit violence upon themselves. Arguable the state may regulate this kind of violence based on the need to protect vulnerable people. (When you buy a drug to kill yourself, you are by definition vulnerable). Here too it is chain responsibility, the further the act is away from killing the less criminal it will be, but whether it should be entirely legal is a question of legal policy.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Yes and that is all fine. What I am trying to do is show why these laws are quite consistent and what the legal principles behind them are. They are, as far as I am concerned, more consistent then your proposals, so I am trying to explain why I hold them to be so.
We also usually keep people’s Internet history and pornographic preferences personal and private as well. Why do you think that adultery is a violation of privacy but having the police take someone’s computer to check if they have child porn on it isn’t a violation of privacy?
Quoting Tobias
I think it’s worth pointing out that it seems that a single person that consumes child porn produces a very minuscule percentage of the cause of the child being abused. The producer and distributor of that content is the primary party responsible for the abuse and the audience of the porn only contributes in a minuscule way unless you add them all up as a collective. In contrast, the primary contributors to adultery are adulterers themselves. So, even if child porn produces more harm than adultery overall, I still think it’s reasonable to believe that the average adulterer causes more harm in our society than the average person that watches child porn. Thus, I think we should either make both activities legal or make both of them illegal.
Quoting Tobias
Then why do you think that it has business preventing the sexual abuse of children? After all, isn’t a big reason for why sexual abuse is bad is because it violates a person’s dignity? There are other seemingly justified laws that we have to protect people’s dignity like the fact that spitting on someone’s face is illegal. Technically, a little of spit in your face could do you no physical or financial harm. But, it is disrespectful for someone to spit on you and this is why it’s illegal(and rightfully so it seems).
Quoting Tobias
I think it’s even more difficult to enforce laws against possession of child porn without locking up innocent people. Someone could put child porn on your computer without you knowing it and it would be impossible to determine who exactly put the porn on the computer if multiple people had accessed the computer. In addition, I heard stories of people getting hacked and having law enforcement think that they were visiting child porn sites. Also, it’s possible for your neighbor to steal your WiFi and use it for child porn and potentially get you in trouble. So, I would say that child porn laws have their own set of enforcement problems to deal with.
I also think that we can protect people that want to have something like an open relationship if we only make adultery illegal for those that signed a legal agreement that promises that they would stay faithful to their partner. We can then start encouraging people in monogamous relationships to sign such agreements and people willing to sign these agreements might be more desirable in the “monogamous relationship market”. And everyone who signs the agreement seems to be basically consenting to having this law imposed on them so I don’t think they can rightfully complain about the punishment. Also, the couple can agree on the punishment. For example, they can make it a civil case with a financial settlement instead of a criminal sentence if they want. You can’t really do that with child porn though and so that’s another important advantage for adultery laws over child porn laws in my opinion.
It is also a violation of privacy but some violations of privacy are to be tolerated in the interest of law enforcement. We find the bodily integrity of children important and that is why we have enacted laws against the abuse of children. Consuming child pornography is creating demand, which in turn pulls supply so we deem it worthy of prosecution as well. In order to prosecute effectively law enforcement needs some competencies such as invading privacy under circumstances. (a suspicion for instance). We simply do not find your personal injury and humiliation a big enough deal to warrant an inasion of privacy.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Indeed and to dissuade people from joining the collective we have made the distribution and possession of child pornography a criminal offense. I do not know what you do not get. You keep thinking that harm is the primary reason for criminal law to enter the fray, but it is not. It is only one of the considerations.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
No it does not cause more harm 'to society' it causes harm to a person in society. Whereas the ciolation of a child shakes the trust of the child and his parents in society, because rape an sexual abuse are associated with violence, people look to the state to protect us from vioence and therefore the occurrence of such grave violence against a person is a shock to the legal order. We accept that love sometimes goes bad. We do not like adultery and disapprove of it, but we do not see it as severe enough to allow criminal investigations with the aforementioned violations of privacy. And again the level of harm is only one issue, the feelings of resentment against a state allowing violence against children is another. Consensual sex between a minor and an adult is criminal even if no harm is done and both live happily ever after.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Because we should protect the dignity of children who are powerless more than the dignity of an adult who has made a bad choice of partner. Moreover, sexual abuse concerns violence and force adultery does not. The state has the monopoly of violence so any violent crime is perscuted more heavily. I od not know if spitting on someone's face is illegal. But even if, then still there is the reason not to proescurte adultery and that is that we do not like the state snooping inside our bedrooms. The street is a public place in which the state has more jurisdiction.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Who says anything about locking up innocent people? But yes the laws against possession of child pornography are difficult to enforece. (less so are the laws against the distribution of it). But so? The law against intra marital rape is also very difficult to enforce. At the end of the day it comes down to what we want to protect and your feeling of rejection just does not cut the bar. The bads outweigh the goods. I for one do not want police scrutiny over my love life.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Ohh that certainly is true. We might well have a debate on the level of intent one must have. That is a technical matter which I think exceeds the scope of this debate, because it does not touch on the criminality of child porn possession, but the level of proof required.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Why would we want to formalize our love life like that an why would we go through all this trouble? We can also accept that love goes bad. We might actually in our current prudish society well go the way you suggest. I think it abhorrent having legal agreements ddetermining my way to live. Some countries actually do have adultery as a cause for divorce and it influences the height of alimony and some such, So that kind of legal systems exist. The contract against addultery in such a legal system is called marriage. That is far different than a prohibiton of adultery though. I think such anti adultery contracts might even exist, in prenuptual agreements for instance but I am not a civil law person. The fact that cannot do that with child pornography is an argument for use of criminal law, not against it.
Who knows what thoughts are in the mind of that person walking across the street over there? And if I see another person, dying, say, falling from the Twin Towers as they burn, am I to give them the benefit of the doubt, assuming they are an "innocent" victim, and not a guy who just beat his wife or molested his daughter that morning? Or maybe she cheated on her husband, in the utility closet, seconds before the plane hit?
There is a lot to be said for the state staying out of our heads. On the other hand, whenever someone (or something) "was harmed in the making of this film" then I see no problem with the state criminalizing the watching of the film. I feel sorry for all the cops who can't un-see all the shit they've seen in the course of their duties. What if they secretly felt a stirring in their groin? What if they were repulsed and calloused because of it? What if they gave an extra few whacks with the baton on some criminal that was complying, just because the cop was traumatized by what he'd seen that morning in the evidence locker?
Watching people get shot used to be a rarity, or acting. Now you can watch combat on youtube from some helmet cam in Helmand Province. Maybe that improves the species, to see what soldiers see, and learn to abhor war. Or maybe it just gives PTSD and fucks up your dreams at night.
Maybe life is ugly and the internet is life. Maybe you find there the collective human psyche, good and bad. Maybe our brains are dark. Maybe the light is a lie. Maybe it's grey. Maybe we should create the VR dolls I reference in another thread. Maybe that would move us to the next level of human evolution.
I don't know. Just spit-balling.
I love and hate when nature upsets the best laid plans of mice and men. From fetal viability to age of majority to promiscuity to hormonal differences and on.
I love to watch mankind fidget, wring his hands in discomfort, wail and cry about that over which he has no control, and yet he tries to control anyway, with law, civil or criminal. I particularly like reading the case law on such matters, and the words of the best legal minds and philosophers we have, contorting and twisting and trying to make square pegs fit in round holes.
If animals were as sanctimonious as we are, they would say "Suck on that bitches! You ain't above or beyond us!"
On the other hand, I hate when I'm the one on the short end of some natural stick. I want to punish, civilly or criminally, or even self-help on the matter at hand.
But I do find, as a general principle, that the older one gets, the more objective, distant, forgiving and understanding they might be. I think it is good for people to read those the legal opinions for just that reason. The only part that leaks out to the public, in snippets and sound bites, are the upshot of words and phrases, like "heat of the moment" etc., layered with levels like 1st degree, 2nd degree, black heart, negligent, blah blah blah. But there is usually some good explanation of the genesis of the wisdom and that is a good thing to read. You have to read the whole opinion. The dissent. Understand it.
In the end, though, underlying many of these concerns is the hormone; nature. And sometimes mankind choses not to fight. The criminal is decriminalized, leaving the civil, which in turn can be rendered impotent, bringing us back to "sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you."
In this light, regardless of the intensity of feeling that springs from betrayal, and regardless of society's desire to limit revenge and self-help, there is a reason to not exact revenge upon one who has betrayed you: That reason is you. That reason is them. Everyone is human. Everyone is an animal. If you aren't your type, then why should you be anyone else's type? And if you are your type, then fret not the betrayal. You always have you. Fuck them.
Theoretically true but by decontextualising it from the criminal background from which legal prostitution arose, the legalisation of prostitution led to a huge increase in human trafficking of sex workers. We've seen it happen in the Netherlands. So unfortunately this isn't true in practice.
:lol: :up:
Just curious mods…just curious.
It's not independent, it's related. Which is why human trafficking increased in the a Netherlands when prostitution was legalised. And while it makes sense for those who chose to become sex workers, or even those who were initially forced into it, for their own sake to pursue legalisation and unions that doesn't mean they understand the wider repercussions of such policies.
You can't just legalise and not expect demand to go up.
Sure here are wider repercussions, but the correct answer isnt to make prostitution illegal, its to crack down on the criminal enterprise of human trafficking. Why can’t both be done?
I think this entire thread is a ruse to justify child pornography, which is repugnant by almost any standard. Including it in the same category as drugs or prostitution is ridiculous.
If you enjoy viewing nude pictures of children, or watching them engage in sex acts, then you have a problem, should acknowledge that problem, and should seek help for it.
So given the reality of the situation, even if I support the theoretical point that adults should be free to contract for sex in practice I've learned to oppose it but in such a way as to not oppress sex workers (who are generally already victims). So I support legalising the prostitute and allowing them to unionise but criminalise those who buy the service. It's an incongruent position but the best option on the table where it concerns the Netherlands.
:up:
When I first read the OP, and some subsequent posts, I felt there was a not-so-well executed effort to veil, or bury child pornography in with a pile of other verboten activities as a way of pushing it out from under the fridge; so it wouldn't get stepped on. The fact it was last in the list, as if it was a mere afterthought, was part of it.
I think there might be better, even more open and honest ways to engage on the subject but I've got the same amount of interest in such discussion as I have for racism, fascism, slavery, the Stars and Bars, statues of enemies in the town square, and whatnot: Fuck 'em.
I could be wrong, though. Hmmm.
Why can’t you do both though?
It seems like a bad idea to let criminals dictate policy.
Like, “Whoa whoa whoa fella. We can’t make that legal cuz the criminals will act up and we can’t have that”. Criminals will be criminals, the answer for me is to combat the criminal behaviours, not placate them. I mean, your plan is to punish the people (the johns) who participate in something you just made legal (for sex workers to sex work) instead of punishing the people who A) were the problem in the first place and B) are committing more crime and inflicting more suffering that they were before. (The human traffickers).
That seems pretty assbackwards to me. Is that justice?
I agree that harm is not the only consideration but I think it’s one of the most important ones for sure. I think the other big consideration is whether or not it’s the government’s role to prevent the harm in question. I actually just came up with another argument for why curtailing the demand for child porn isn’t within the duties of our government. That argument involves the consideration that the average person that watches child porn probably mostly watches child porn that was produced in foreign countries. This is especially true in a very small country like Sweden for example.
Presumably, the government of a nation has no duty to prevent the abuse of children in other countries. At the very least, it probably have more of a duty to protect the dignity of its adult citizens. So, they should probably focus all the money and energy to target the producers and distributors of child porn. That way they are actually helping children within their borders rather than arresting people for essentially foreign aid reasons.
Quoting Tobias
Suppose there was a hypothetical society that felt that adultery should be illegal but child porn should be legal. Why should I think that this society is inferior to our current society on the topic in question? My whole argument is that this hypothetical society has better attitudes on this issue than how our current society feels on these matters.
Quoting Tobias
The possession of child porn is not violence though. It has an extremely indirect causal relationship to the actual sexual abuse of children in our own country.
Yes and your whole argument is misguided and I am trying to show you. It is inferior (all things being equal) because it allows police intervention on an important area in everybody's lives, namely their love live and it is inferior because it decrominalizes something much more worthy of police intervention namely the possessing of child pornography, tacitly condoning a practice we find much more crime worthy.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
You just do not want to get it. It does not matter if the link is small collectively it increases demand and we think creating demand for an extremely abusive practice is wrong. Therefore we use criminal law intervention as a policy measure to kill demand. Something does not have to be vioent to be a crime but we do want to stop the violence inherent in the chain of child porn production. Now stop repeating yourself and accept what has been told to you countless times and to which you have no answer.
What I say isn't in a vacuum and I find the suggestion kind of weird. It's you who starts from a principle and then conclude things must be a certain way. I agree with the principle but know what it costs in the real world to just legalise. It's a well known issue for anyone working for the police or public prosecution in the Netherlands, where many of my peers from university ended up working - which is how I know.
The Netherlands isn't using the Nordic Model. I don't understand where you get that from. It's been legal for both prostitutes and buyers since 2000 with devastating effect for human trafficking victims. It's no coincidence that the UN Office of Drug and Crime consistently lists the Netherlands as a top destination (and regularly as the top destination) for victims of human trafficking. That's disproportionate if you consider size and population of the Netherlands compared to Germany and the UK.
60% of all European human trafficking is for sex exploitation but if looking only at women, it's 92%. See: https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/organised-crime-human-trafficking/trafficking-human-beings_en
The question is what do you want to prioritise? Sex worker rights or saving/avoiding human trafficking victims? I'm choosing the latter because most sex worker rights are protected under the Nordic model - even if it's not perfect from a principle-based point of view. And since, even in the Netherlands where sex work has been legal for over 20 years, there is only a very small group who fully willingly work as prostitutes instead of as a result of circumstances (mental health, debts, poverty) or at worst as victim of human trafficking, fixing the circumstances surrounding sex work is a much bigger problem in terms of number of victims and seriousness of the breach of human rights of trafficking victims. Or in other words unwilling sex workers far exceed willing sex workers and the human rights abuse suffered by trafficking victims are much worse than the limited infringements suffered by willing sex workers.
Only once you have the human trafficking under control and a good social safety net with respect to mental health and debt management, should you take the next step and fully legalise. It should be a goal not a principle.
Quoting DingoJones
Criminals don't dictate policy, limited resources do. That said, it took over 15 years before local and national governments changed focus to dismantling networks of human trafficking instead of closing "windows" where victims worked. But it requires a lot of international cooperation too, which has steadily been improving since 2012 thanks to EU legislation (specifically EU directive on combatting human trafficking.
A fair point, but not a rebuttal to to my statement. Is your argument that because it takes time that we should just throw the “johns” under the bus? With limited resources choices must be made, priorities serviced. In the multitude of things to put resources towards there is room for both if anyone actually cared, but they dont.
Eating meat is the same as killing animals. Good point!
Not having thought much about "adultery" in the past, I find myself wondering if our definition thereof is not dependent upon the concept of monogamy. I wonder, how might the above definition be required to change within a polygamous society, there being many societies on Earth (most Muslim, and many non-Muslim African societies, for instance) wherein polygamy is both legal and socially accepted? What should the definition of "adultery" be within the context of a "polygamous marriage"? This question might be somewhat off-topic, as I assume the OP is defining "adultery" in terms of the characteristic "western" marriage. Nevertheless, the question occurs to me...
Of course they do. If I start selling poison masqueraded as candy to children oversees, surely the government has a duty to stop me.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Tobias is not making the best counterargument. We need not even consider production.
(Recap for others; J and C are in a monogamous relationship; P and J have relations violating this).
To the degree that P causes harm to C, the nature of said harm is that of a trust violation, not sexual exploitation; i.e., whereas this is considered a wrong and a harm, it is not considered a form of rape. By contrast, though the production of such pornography is indeed more severe and can create harms, the consumption of child pornography in and of itself is non-consensual sexual exploitation of a child's image. If P and J having consensual relations can be a harm to C, surely non-consensual exploitation of a child is a worse harm to the child.
Adultary can be a kind of drug too. In Portugal, drugs can be obtained legally. All associated criminal activities faded away. A plus for drug addicts and citizens.
Adultary should be restricted to adults only. Children should be watched over so they can't become prey of money-hungry criminals (I have no better name for them; the child-porn watchers can get help if they want).
Prostitution should be made legal.
Assisted suicide? Where I live, some time ago there was a diacussion about a suicide pill for elder people. Why not give it? To all, if wanted. Some people wanna die. If they want, why not?
I'd like an approach that creates the least victims as a result of (un)intended consequences. It's a weighing of interests to me. A John paying a fine doing something he doesn't necessarily have to, to avoid victims of human trafficking seems a reasonable trade off to me. As I've said and I'll repeat, it's not ideal and I agree with the principle and I even used to unequivocally argue in favour of it until I was confronted with the real life consequences of it by people working in the field. For now I consider the Nordic model a better alternative than full legalisation of sex work with respect to the Netherlands.
And "Which do I prioritize?" assumes a false dichotomy. Criminalization of 'sex work' endangers (& criminalizes) sex workers AND finances (as well as protects) trafficking which is the status quo in North America. Resources wasted on policing illicit 'sex work' should be repurposed to investigating, breaking-up trafficking networks and prosecuting traffickers-pimps, not only nationally but through international coordination. Apparently, the policy and policing failures in the EU are as great a (or the greater) contributor to trafficking into The Netherlands just as law enforcement failures are with respect to Russian and South American trafficking into the US wherein 'sex work' is criminalized.
Stuff is legal there too. You can buy it in coffeeshops. Heroin is given for free to the heavy addicts. With succes. Prostitutes pay tax. Semen tax.
:100: I don't think it would be unreasonable to divorce the alleged reason for the trafficking from the trafficking itself. The way we have it now, "sex trafficking" is like "cotton slavery." As if other slavery was okay. :roll: Just go after the trafficking of humans, period. If individuals want to screw or pick cotton, they can do it for pay and pocket all the benefits instead of turning all or some over to a trafficker/slave owner. In fact, let's do away with the term "trafficking" and call it what it is: slavery. Why distinguish between a slave trader and a slave owner? I thought we settled this in the 1860s? Guess not. Find a slave owner? Kill the MFr.
:fire: :strong: :cool:
I had you pegged more intelligent than this.
Ok, I’m actually quite persuaded by this reasoning here. I think the consent aspect of this is something that I really failed to consider. I actually want to elaborate further on this to show how I think this consideration is the key thing that I think makes possession of child porn worse than adultery.
The consideration I had is that it’s usually illegal in every country to be a peeping Tom and I think that law is indeed justified. If somebody is knowingly watching a nude image of someone for the purposes of sexual gratification and they know for sure that the person in question did not consent to the image being produced then I see no reason to think that this is better than being a peeping tom. Given this, if being a peeping tom ought to be illegal than possession of porn obviously made without consent should also be illegal.
Initially, one might think that this line of reasoning implies that the possession of some adult porn should also be illegal. But, I think there are several practical considerations that would make an exclusive focus on child porn more feasible and immune from locking up innocent people. For one, all instances of child porn are non-consensual while it’s hard to tell if a piece of adult porn is consensual. Also, it’s easier to get people to care about this issue if it involves kids because people often reason with their emotions and targeting pedophiles has political advantages. Thus. I must concede that my OP was wrong regarding my comparison between adultery and child porn.
Intriguing isn't it that there are immoral acts that aren't illegal but that all illegal acts are immoral?