02) Sex Offender Registries Don’t Keep Kids Safe, But Politicians Keep Expanding Them Anyway
“Lawmakers are using “stranger danger” myths to keep almost a million Americans out of work and on the verge of homelessness.
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The first time Damian Winters got evicted was in 2015. He was living with his wife and two sons in suburban Nashville when his probation officer called his landlord and informed him that Winters was a registered sex offender.
The previous year, when he was 24 years old, Winters had been arrested for downloading a three-minute porn clip. The file description said the girl in the video was 16; the prosecutor said she was 14. He was charged with attempted sexual exploitation of a minor and, because he had used file-sharing software to download the video, attempted distribution of child pornography.
Winters had no criminal record, no history of contact with children and no other illegal files on his computer. Facing an eight-year prison sentence, he had taken a plea deal that gave him six years’ probation and 15 years on Tennessee’s sex offender registry.
The day after his landlord found all this out, Winters found a letter on his porch giving him and his family 72 hours to move out. He ended up in one homeless shelter, his wife and sons in another.
He had no idea that it would be the last time he would ever live in a home. He has been sleeping in shelters, halfway houses and parked cars ever since.
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Winters is a member of an expanding and invisible American underclass. In 1994, when Congress passed the first sex offender registration law, the list was reserved for law enforcement officials and only applied to the most serious offenders. Since then, American lawmakers at every level have relentlessly increased its scope and severity.
The registry now includes more than 900,000 people, a population slightly greater than Vermont’s. At least 12 states require sex offender registration for public urination; five apply it to people charged with offenses related to sex work; 29 require it for consensual sex between teenagers. According to Human Rights Watch, people have been forced to spend decades on the registry for crimes they committed as young as 10 years old.”
This article is uncommonly information rich…I recommend reading it.
This selection from “In Self Defense: The Life and Times of An Atheist BoyLover…Memoirs and Ethos”, has been narrated by Rocco White. Please enjoy the listen, or read along if you like…or need to.
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Just some thoughts…
Personally, I take no issue with people bringing up complicated issues, with no easy answers…not even when it is a serious irritant…such as “children raped in child pornography” has always been.
It’s one of those “Gotcha!” arguments.
What I do take issue with…is a system and culture which demonizes the entirety of everything called “child pornography”, and completely removes said content from public investigation and scrutiny…under threat of severe punishment, for defying the rules.
Personally…I believe the predominant views and attitudes on things like nudity, sex, and exhibitionism verses modesty, are generally dictated and imposed by our culture.
If we lived as a hippy Eden, where everybody was allowed to live clothing optional, and sexually associate out in the open…and children were not barred from these things…where it was all just accepted as normal…then we would not have the same emotions of shame, regret and victimhood, which are predominant in cultures which practice body shame, or shame of sexuality.
I’m not suggesting a hippie Eden is perfect…and there are no perfect environments for all existence of life…
…I am saying, that humans are self defeating when they obsess over human sexuality, what other people are doing…thinking…looking at…
Children being raped in “child pornography” [which I think is a distortion of the term], cannot really be intelligently addressed and dealt with, when we have authoritarians using this as an excuse to round up and incarcerate every person who’s viewed/possessed anything that falls under the umbrella of “child pornography”…which is a wide spanning [and ever growing] category.
One concession…
Some people use the term “child erotica”, to differentiate between children mutually engaged in sexual pleasure, and the filming of children being forced into a sexual situation, or just outright raped…I’m not sure how widely this has caught on, however. I’ve been trying to incorporate it into my own writings and speech…but it’s difficult, after so many years of using the term “child pornography”.
Many of us do not consider adult with child porn, to be “child pornography”…and we certainly reject all porn lacking actual children, to be “child pornography”…In addition, we don’t look upon the filming of children being sexually brutalized, as being “child pornography”…
These are rogue elements which should be flushed out…but to some extent, they flourish due to the fact that “child pornography” has been pushed so deeply underground.
In all fairness…I’m certain this would still remain deeply underground, even if “vanilla style child pornography” were decriminalized…but the point is…there is a wide range of things being grouped in with “child pornography”…and many of us object not only to this bullheaded, forced equivalence grouping…but we also vigorously object to children being subjected to sexual brutality.
As an aside…I personally use the term “sexual brutality”, to differentiate from the socially distorted “sexual violence”…the latter not really caring so much if violence is involved, as it is with tainting a wide range of sexual behaviors, with the concept of violence.
We should keep in mind…children are not innocent, disinterested and uninvolved pawns in all of this.
If the internet has taught us anything…it’s that children and youth, on some level, have a natural capacity towards sexual expression…something that has always been understood by people into child erotica…and the legal statistics are starting to substantiate this in a concrete manner.
What is it?…something like 30 to 40 percent of the arrests and charges in modern times, are of people under eighteen years of age…some are even prepubescent…
…We are talking about the producers and distributors, here…they are kids…not adults…These are kids who decided they wanted to get a sexual thrill via online exhibitionism, and maybe make some money at the same time.
They exist…they are out there…and this inconvenient fact can no longer be hidden…And I have absolutely zero trouble believing this, because I was exactly the sort of boy who would have done this sort of thing, had the technology existed when I was that age…As a social demographic, we sorts of people do exist.
So…to bring this to a close…
Many of us have been demanding for decades an answer…as to why sexual brutality has been forcefully tied to literally all sexual expression involving people under the age of eighteen, like a ball and chain around the neck…
We have also demanded an answer, as to why the authoritarians keep framing this issue…as if those who have tolerance [and fondness] for child erotica, are somehow agreeing with sexual brutality against children…or worse…claiming that “they are the cause of it”…
Between the harmless individuals who simply love watching cute seven year old boys sucking each other off, and the authoritarians who will freak out and behave in gross disproportion to whatever situation is in front of them…it is the power holding authoritarians and their masses, who are far more directly and demonstrably responsible for the ills which befall children and teenagers in the realm of “child pornography”.
I’m not suggesting modern society can wrap it’s mind around this [certainly not where I am from]…but if we want to actually do something of real substance to combat sexual brutality in “child pornography”…then it needs to be decriminalized, brought out into the open and kept functioning under rules and oversight.
This war on human sexuality, has been about as productive as the war on drugs…It’s time to bring this failure to an end, and at least try something different.
01) Best of Non Believers Arguments And Comebacks Part 2
“The speakers in order are:
1. Sam Harris
2. Steven Weinberg
3. Penn Jillette
4. Victor Stenger
5. Richard Dawkins
6. Dan Barker
7. Christopher Hitchens
8. Sean Carroll
9. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
10. Peter Atkins
11. Daniel Dennett
12. Douglas Murray
13. Lawrence Krauss
14. Matt Dillahunty
15. Michael Shermer
16. Neil DeGrasse Tyson
17. AronRa”
01) Best of Non Believers Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 1
“The speakers in order are:
1. Christopher Hitchens
2. Daniel Dennett
3. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
4. Dan Barker
5. David Silverman
6. Douglas Murray
7. Lawrence M. Krauss
8. Matt Dillahunty
9. Michael Shermer
10. Neil DeGrasse Tyson
11. Richard Dawkins
12. Sam Harris
13. Steven Pinker”
01) Sanders aide hits back: Joe Biden ‘just flat out lied’ over health care
“A top official for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) campaign fired back at 2020 presidential rival Joe Biden on Wednesday after he criticized Sanders’s health care plan.
Nina Turner, co-chairwoman of Sanders’s campaign, accused the former vice president of lying about about the senator’s proposed government-run “Medicare for All” plan during an AARP presidential forum in Iowa on Monday.
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