Really, you're going with this situation?

Anyway, I don't eat tomatoes.

Wouldn't go so far as to say I "support people's right to do it", I mean I guess functionally I do, but saying that feels overstated. I'd push a button to get rid of prostitution if I could, whether or not pushing that button entailed satisfying whatever drives men to buy sex. It's all consequentialist for me; I'm fairly sure we just can't get rid of it, so we may as well ameliorate it as best we can.

But dude, you don't need to be blaming Gizmo. You need to be blaming whatever's causing her to say and think these things. Surely.

I'd be against sending people who each chocolate or tomatoes to jail as a practical matter. It would be impossible and would destroy society.

As far as whether someone who eats a tomato deserves punishment (and I eat tomatoes myself), perhaps they do. Chocolate even more so as people in the industry are literally bought and sold rather than "just" held captive for the season.

People are weak and selfish, myself included. This is why in our less weak moments we should do something like ban the import or sales of any products made by slaves or even in any case that doesn't meet some minimum labor standards.

I wouldn't let our failure to protect some class of people get in the way of protecting another class though.

I'm actually curious on the jury's reading on this

That seems like some very, very fine hairsplitting there. It seems like the defense was the Bart and Lisa Simpson defense where Bart says he's just going to swing his arms and if Lisa gets in the way when it's not his fault, and in this case the people wanted to occupy the refuge but also not intimidate the people who worked there, just kind of hover over them while they worked? I guess the jury imagined since the occupiers wanted to occupy the building in response to the federal government arresting the two fire starting guys and not specifically to stop bird watching or whatever that facility did they didn't mean to directly intimate them and prevent their bird watching?

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...medium=twitter

THAT SHOULD HAVE NO BEARING ON THE FACTS OF THE CASE!

also, triumphalism? wat?

This sounds similar to the way I'm a libertarian: in a perfect world with perfect actors, I would vastly prefer libertarianism as the guiding principle for governance.

However, we don't live in a fantasy perfect world and never will. Libertarianism will always be a joke in the real world and prostitution will always be exploitative in the real world. That's just the way things are. No amount of wishing for idealized dream worlds will change that.

I'm just wondering why Gizmo cares about sex slaves more than tomato picking slaves.

sex slaves probably raped more often than tomato picking slaves

i'm a realist

Yeah me too dude.

gizmo: should people who buy drugs be held legally responsible for all the theft, rape, murder, smuggling that goes into delivering the product? I think when someone buys cocaine or heroin they have far less of a case for pleading ignorance than a john. Should they be charged as an accessory to the above crimes?

I am in favor of common sense approach to these things. Radical liberals are not because they are incapable of critical thinking.

This is wildly unpopular with liberals but a common sense thought. If a 16 year old boy has consensual sex with a 22 year old woman, should the woman go to jail for rape? In the past we would make a joke about this which common sense would tell you is an appropriate response. Now the liberal "Taliban" stifles this conversation.

On the subject of drugs, if someone is stupid enough to use cocaine or heroin, I would hope their health insurance would cover rehab. If not, I do not wish to use my tax dollars to incarcerate them or buy tanks for police.

Just FYI if your 'critical thinking' very often lands you on 'common sense' positions then you're almost certainly doing it wrong.

You're gonna have to do lot better than appealing to "common sense". Common sense isn't an argument.

Whether the woman should go to jail or not depends on the circumstances. She should definitely be in trouble though.

Gizmo,

should pornography be illegal?

16 year olds are idiots and can't give consent. It's rape even if it feels like a movie HBO would show only at night.

Louis,

I already asked her a question in a similar direction which of course went disregarded.

WheelGunner,

I give you credit for not supporting Trump, but you seem so mad at isolated sensationalized extreme examples of people being PC that you let it affect your political ideology.

It's not Obama's fault if some college kids yell at their professor that they need to be addressed as "Ze", "Zer" or some other pronoun.

I'm not personally a fan of pornography, but I'm not willing to say it should be illegal. Like I'm not willing to say prostitution should remain illegal.

Careful, your ikes is showing.

I mean, Game of Thrones is like borderline softcore porn.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...nap-story.html

fwiw, if you dig into the case there's a question of whether or not the american partners for backpage knowingly took money from sexual traffickers. But the point is there were sexual traffickers posting ads. I'm okay with backpage not being allowed to share ads that have been shown to feature trafficked women and children. That's where this all started.


I haven't watched GoT in quite a few seasons. Probably won't read TWOW. I'll find out how it ends on wikipedia.

The latest Aeron Greyjoy chapter is a doozy, you're missing out.

Did the jurors vote for acquittal because the prosecutor messed up? The defense was good? They all supported the protesters?

I'm just wondering what their explanation for the verdict was.

Do you think there is a significant difference between pornography and prostitution? In both at its core people are paid to perform sexual acts.