[sersi]

In the fight against the great boogeymen of Terrorism and Sex Predation, the US has lost common sense.

As a kid, when I was 8 years old, I played doctor with my neighbor, we we were both curious about each others differences and so we explored them. So, if I read this article, if this had been in the US, we could have been tried as sex offenders? How does this even make sense? Of course kids are curious about body differences between men and women.

And, when I read those stories, I really don't understand how a teenager could be convicted for having sex with a girl 2 or 3 years younger than her. I can't imagine how a girl sexting could be convicted for producing "Child Porn", that absolutely makes no sense.

And then the treatments describe are a form of abuse. I wouldn't want to be subject to a “penile plethysmograph”.

It's really scary how easily it is to pass Orwellian by invoking "Think of the Children" or "To prevent terrorists". As soon as those two things are uttered, people seem to lose all common sense.

[noxToken]

I'm gonna go against the grain here. I'll preface this by saying that I think all sex-offender cases should be handled on a case-by-case basis, and if we use a bit of common sense, things would be a lot better for everyone. Here's a scenario that is likely rare but plausible.

Some girl and boy both at age 15 could be sexting each other. Pics are exchanged, and the pictures are removed from the phone and placed on a computer hard drive. Neither party wants the pics found, so the classic, "bury the pics 10 levels deep in a made up directory that looks like a legit folder hierarchy" is used. A week later, the pics are forgotten about.

Fast forward 5 years. The hard drive crashes. The once teen has a few sporadic backups, but they haven't been regular. They go to a data recovery business. "I'm mainly concerned with the pictures and a lot of the text documents. Try to salvage as many of those as possible. Everything else is whatever."

The business gets to work and applies a could of filters to list of recovered media. Among the media exists 10 or so pictures of a young teen. He received them when he was 15, and he forgot about them. He had no intention of ever looking at them again. Hell, he would have deleted them ages ago had he thought about it, but now he has a hell of a story to explain to the feds.

I don't think teens should be prosecuted as sex offenders for exchanging pics of themselves with other teens, but I think the heart of the matter is in the right place. I don't have a solution to magically fix everything, because there are always going to be implications. Just don't ruins a kid's life for the truly innocuous mistake of exploring sexuality with someone of the same age.

[verulito]

The problem with "common sense" is that Americans have so little of it. Even though it's entirely legal, to most Americans a 40yo dating a 20yo may as well be illegal. And yet those were the ages of my grandparents when they met, who remained married until death and produced a wonderful family.

[InitialLastName]

Americans can't feel that strongly about it... the current president and his (current) wife are 24 years apart in age.

[aanm1988]

> I think the heart of the matter is in the right place.

It's not. Not when you are trying to toss a teenager in prison for taking pictures of themselves.

It's also not if you consider the reasoning behind the laws. Is child porn illegal because it's disgusting, or because you can't create it without subjecting a child to an act they can't possibly consent to? Shouldn't it really be the latter, in which case you should really consider that in many (most?) places the laws regarding consent are different for teenagers.

[rimliu]

The most fucked-up case I've heard of was a teen being persecuted as adult for taking the nude picture of self.

[ceejayoz]

Lest someone accuse you of exaggerating: http://www.pressherald.com/2015/09/24/teen-sexting-case-high...

[bambax]

> It's really scary how easily it is to pass Orwellian by invoking "Think of the Children" or "To prevent terrorists".

The goal is not to fight so-called sex-crimes or terrorism. The goal is to

1. coerce people into behaving in an ideal way where sexuality is constrained and nothing happens

2. discriminate against minorities

using big words and supposed "victims" as tools and props.

[golergka]

Just to clarify: do you think that this is being put through intentionally by people who're organized together with hidden evil plan?

[coldtea]

You seem to imply that for you anything of the sort is X-files worthy material.

To "coerce people into behaving in an ideal way where sexuality is constrained and nothing happens" you just need some groups hell-bent on the protestant WASP ideals that "made america great". Then you can also have some opportunists that play those cards because they make a living out of it (e.g. appealing to a conservative audience), and so on.

So it is indeed "put through intentionally by people who're organized together".

Do they have "hidden evil plans" related to their bigger plan?

All the time.

Not all of them together, but groups here and there, conspire all the time (in the sense that doing something shady and unknown to the public to further their cause).

Like for example people were openly racist in the South in the sixties, but teams of "community leaders" and such could also conspire to bring forward some hidden evil plan related to the cause (e.g. lynch someone or burn some crosses and beat up some militant blacks or pro-black people to put them "in their place"). They didn't do those things openly. But they did it for the same cause they were openly in favor of.

A similar "orchestrated evil plan" e.g. would be a "character assassination" of some person on the other ideological side. You get some dirt on them, have various friends in the media push it, etc.

[CamTin]

There doesn't necessarily need to be a literal conspiracy in order for the intended effects of laws to be completely bogus. For example, I think we can all agree that poll taxes were intended to keep southern black Americans from voting, even though I doubt there was ever a "Jim Crow Caucus" of lawmakers from Southern states to decide on the best policy objectives to further their racist agenda.

[stagbeetle]

Many people with similar ideas all working independently to push their agendas can mimic the collective effect of a conscious and planned conspiracy.

People don't have evil plans, only selfish ones.

[bambax]

Yes and no -- or rather, no, but yes. People didn't congregate and got organized to achieve this, so, no. But, deep down they know what they're doing (or at the very least they're not bothered by the consequences), and so, yes.