Bludgeoning equiptment at the ready...
Anyone else want to hit this Dutch Political Party for Pedophiles with hammers?
I'd heard about the party already. What gets me about this particular article are the completely extraneous pictures of Michael Jackson that pop up everywhere on the thing. (My personal opinion is that MJ isn'a pedophile, he's just really, really weird. Plus, I don't have all the facts, I wasn't there, I can't judge.)
Anyhoo, they want to lower the age of consent to 12 and make child pornography and bestiality legal. The philosophical debate that sparks from this is no less fascinating on my end ("Is there a natural 'wrong' or just an imposed 'wrong'?" "At what point does the unacceptable, when forged into the mainstream, become status quo?" "What is innocence and how is it corrupted/ruined?" "How effective is prohibition when that which is taboo is inheirently tempting?" "Why is the taboo inhereintly tempting?" etc, etc, etc...), but it still skeeves me out. It would be one thing if these were philosophical measures imposed by those who honestly just wanted to open the floor for discussion and, in the end, save a lot of people a lot of trauma, but these are clearly people who want to pave the way for their own interests to be fulfilled and nothing more.
This not only makes it more difficult to talk about these very, very important issues, it also endangers the world view of some of the Netherlands' more healthy liberal policies (legalization of "soft" drugs, regulated prostitution, etc). It's impossible to think that a conservative politician wouldn't immediately jump to lump these issues together.
Not to mention...how the hell did bestiality get lumped in with pedophilia? Are children animals? (some would argue "oh...yes indeed")...
Meh. More later.
I'd heard about the party already. What gets me about this particular article are the completely extraneous pictures of Michael Jackson that pop up everywhere on the thing. (My personal opinion is that MJ isn'a pedophile, he's just really, really weird. Plus, I don't have all the facts, I wasn't there, I can't judge.)
Anyhoo, they want to lower the age of consent to 12 and make child pornography and bestiality legal. The philosophical debate that sparks from this is no less fascinating on my end ("Is there a natural 'wrong' or just an imposed 'wrong'?" "At what point does the unacceptable, when forged into the mainstream, become status quo?" "What is innocence and how is it corrupted/ruined?" "How effective is prohibition when that which is taboo is inheirently tempting?" "Why is the taboo inhereintly tempting?" etc, etc, etc...), but it still skeeves me out. It would be one thing if these were philosophical measures imposed by those who honestly just wanted to open the floor for discussion and, in the end, save a lot of people a lot of trauma, but these are clearly people who want to pave the way for their own interests to be fulfilled and nothing more.
This not only makes it more difficult to talk about these very, very important issues, it also endangers the world view of some of the Netherlands' more healthy liberal policies (legalization of "soft" drugs, regulated prostitution, etc). It's impossible to think that a conservative politician wouldn't immediately jump to lump these issues together.
Not to mention...how the hell did bestiality get lumped in with pedophilia? Are children animals? (some would argue "oh...yes indeed")...
Meh. More later.