Comments | blobert: a thought to consider

blobert

a thought to consider

Oct 04, 2006 16:39

"Foley" and "pedophile" are linked together in rhetoric from both political sides. When news of Foley's internet exchanges with teenage pages first hit the blogosphere, there was an interesting discussion sprinkled within the general condemnation, hosted over at DailyKos. (I really only skim that site. I find too many comments read like they were ( Read more... )

linguistics

Comments 6

ellen_fremedon October 5 2006, 01:42:58 UTC

Hanne Blank made a very similar point yesterday.

blobert October 5 2006, 03:02:05 UTC

Oooo. Thank you for the link. And my new word of the day is ephebephilia: the desire for adolescents.

Question of Law vg36 October 5 2006, 01:51:40 UTC

Mr. Foley was not breaking a law of DC or Maryland. He was nowhere near breaking the law with regards to the pages in DC and Maryland (assuming they were 16). If any of them were in Virginia, where the age of consent is 18, then he was breaking the law. So, while personal moral ideas may guide people elsewhere, legally he hasn't committed a crime against these interns in two of the three jurisdictions. The law is also unclear about whether he has committed a crime if some of these kids were in Virginia (as I am guessing, he at the time was not in Virginia ( ... )

Re: Question of Law vg36 October 5 2006, 01:55:06 UTC

Just one thing, I have not actually read or heard anything about this except that the interns were at least 16, which is the age of consent in DC.

Re: Question of Law blobert October 5 2006, 03:10:39 UTC

I had a feeling that the internet stuff was more a breach of trust than a crime. But I have heard people raise the question of the congress-people's relation to the pages. I guess the pages are earning high school credit for their work. If the Congress-person a page works under assume the role of being that page's academic supervisor/teacher, then maybe there are laws against a teacher contacting his student like Mr. Foley did?

I'm sure these questions will all be answered eventually.

braddyboophd October 8 2006, 01:22:53 UTC

Excellent discussion. I saw a similar, though shorter, comment over on another blog. There is definitely a necessary distinction between pedophilia and being attracted to someone who doesn't look old. In other words, finding Britney Spears sexy when she first hit the scene is not too disturbing (finding her sexy now is!), but finding JonBenet Ramsey sexy is wrong in so many ways.