Quote: (05-04-2016 01:14 AM)GlobalMan Wrote:
The way this story is presented is too race-baity for my tastes, and far below the standards of Reason. The fact that the author prefaced a crucial point which gives an explanation to the difference in charges with "For what it's worth", like it's a minor detail that should not sway you from the picture he has tried to paint, betrays the angle he desperately wants to sell.
There is no evidence race has played a factor. It's simply the statutes dictating charges based on age.
All that aside, these cases where kids are being charged with sex crimes for sexting with their bf/gf are, indeed, absurd.
Teenagers are sexually interested in each other? No way!
First of all it's ridiculous to charge anyone with a crime here. Teenagers are horny, and they're going to tease, and they're going to entice and they're going to fuck.
Like Phoenix said above, this is a victimless "crime". This is simply the state enforcing how it wants people to communicate. Now what if it were 8 year olds sexting each other? I don't think the government should start prosecuting them but it certainly should be stopped.
Secondly, I think GlobalMan is right. In comparison to some of the other fucked up stories of charging kids with sex crimes, this isn't at all different.
If this blows up in the media, I see it as another way to incite racial tensions. Some whites are going to be pissed and some blacks are going to be pissed and we're all going to blame each other and pretend that race mixing has never happened before, and that whites are the only ones that would frown upon it.
Hell, you can even picture this on the news as a little segment with some white guy desperately trying to convince everyone that he's not racist and a mexican woman saying that the police response to this is further evidence of systematic oppression, and that we've still got a long way to go. I guess BLM isn't agitating enough and we need these people to start fighting each other in the streets.
So instead of criminalizing behaviour on smartphones that teenagers certainly practice in private, how about getting the state out of our fucking lives?