Now, Jessie's parents are attempting to launch a national campaign seeking laws to address "sexting" - the practice of forwarding and posting sexually explicit cell-phone photos online. The Logans also want to warn teens of the harassment, humiliation and bullying that can occur when that photo gets forwarded. [More]The Logans are free to warn anyone they want about anything they like. As for the rest of it, my natural inclination to feel sympathy for them has been overshadowed by more negative sentiments.
Monday, March 23, 2009
There Oughtta Be a Law
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14 comments:
I can't imagine the grief of losing a child. My son is only twelve, and I can't bear the thought of something happening to him.
I educate my son that everything he does online is not private, plus the fact that it can never be undone. If he causes himself harm, the last thing I would do is to advocate for more government control over our lives. What a terrible legacy, to have a bit of tyranny named after the child you loved.
I wish the parent's well, but hope they come to their senses. Rather than sponsor loss of freedom, perhaps a campaign directed at parents teaching their children about the dangerous world they live in?
This is where liberty is lost first. There is no idea so noble, so good, so pure, that it cannot be contaminated beyond repair by the forcible compulsion of law. I am not aware that history has ever--ever--demonstrated otherwise.
It's a horrible story, of course, and it pulls at any parent's heartstrings like the sun rises in the east. I have a three-month old daughter and I assure you I did not need to hear about this, today or any other day.
But...if it is true that adversity reveals character, as I certainly believe it does, then a person's response reveals much about who they are. I always want to believe the best in people, unless and until they give me reason otherwise--sometimes to a fault. I offer no apologies for this, and I sincerely hope that the Logans' response is merely a matter of being seduced by the Siren song of grief, and that they are simply unable to see the even worse consequences of what they ask to impose on others.
Liberty is not measured by one's capacity to turn aside an obviously bad idea. True liberty is the measure of our willingness to cast off a bad idea cloaked inside a good one.
(Incidentally, true liberty also rejects the very idea that "idea" and "law" should somehow have an identity sign between them. This is the literal inversion of Jeffersonian liberalism!)
This case, of course, highlights symptoms of the greater problem, not the problem itself. And ceding the point that arbitrary government coercion is somehow legitimate in this case, forfeits any remaining moral authority for later, more obvious cases. When the point is ceded, it's all over but the shouting.
I hold a harsher view. It is difficult for me to have sympathy for Jessica's parents. Here's why; their call to get government or schools or just anyone to do "something", reveals, I think, how they must have raised Jessica.
The idea that somebody else should do for you what you should have done or not for yourself, or punish and deny freedom for all those who did not save you or your child from yourselves could not have been beneficial in teaching Jessica to be responsible for herself or her actions, nor could that type of rearing have rendered her capable of dealing with any unpleasant consequences of her actions.
In other words, they set her up to fail. Now they want everyone who didn't save their daughter from their teaching or lack thereof to pay the price for their ineptitude.
Sorry, I do feel sorry for Jessica. I cannot say that I am very sympathetic to the parents who now want to extract a price from everybody else.
Some may call my stance heartless, but it is not. Had her parents taught her better and not taught her that somebody "else" ought to do "something" and there "oughta be a law" when self-discipline is what is called for, she may very well still be alive. Preventing other parents from teaching those lessons through legislation removing self-discipline from the table and replacing it with the force of the state is reprehensible and heartless. Simply because it will create more Jessicas. That is heartless.
What kind of a sick, twisted society makes people so ashamed of their bodies that they would kill themselves over being seen?
And then what kind of sick, twisted parents want to make sure society not only stays just as sick, but want to pass "laws" to make it even worse?
I just wish they would come to their senses before their "law" kills more kids, through shame and taunting, and "legal" penalties.
Should've beaten some responsibility and common sense into the kid, and some thicker skin. Aww, your high school buddies saw you naked... Get over it, laugh it off and roll out.
Now, the parents should get some common sense beaten into em.
straightarrow and Ted are correct.
tougher laws against "sexting"... yes please... because locking up 15 year olds and labeling them as sexual offenders for the rest of their life isnt harsh enough
Anybody out there remember when the outrage over girls wearing miniskirts to school started? You can believe anything you want, you can disbelieve anything you want. I just look in my Manual, and there the words are. But nobody wants to hear that "crap", so here we are, pornography, teen Moms, Aids, other VD, rape a daily occurrence, and this brand of idiocy. But you go ahead and do what you wanna do. As for me and my house...... By the way Kent, the Bible never talks about being ashamed of your body(I know you didn't bring it up) but it does talk a lot about having respect for yourself.
Respect for yourself and nudity have nothing to do with one another in a healthy society. Only where nudity has been demonized and punished and treated as something shameful is there a (falsely enforced) corelation between "respect for yourself" and avoiding being seen nude.
Who believes this girl would have killed herself had no one made a big deal out of seeing more of her skin than usual?
Well, just repeal everyones' common sense, and we can all run around naked. Ironically, appearing nude for women causes men to think of copulating. Go figure. Then, copulating being a basic human behaviour, men encountering the same woman seen naked, tends to make them remember it, and think about copulating, yet again.It's just crazy, huh? Since seeing more skin than usual is no big deal, to a thinking man, I should be able to post naked pictures of my wife, on the bulletin board where she works, and everyone should be cool with it. Maybe not. I guess I have to deal with the way the world is, rather than THE WAY I IMAGINE IT SHOULD BE. I don't care if people want to send texts of themselves naked to one another, and it's never been any of my damned business if they do so. But an elephant jumping off a cliff can imagine he is a bird, if he wants to, for a while. Reality brings him back to earth.
What makes this "common sense"?
Men don't ever need to see a woman nude to think of copulating. It happens spontaneously hundreds of times a day with or without a naked woman (or her photo) present. And you are still responsible for your actions no matter what you are thinking.
Without your wife's consent, you shouldn't be posting any pictures of her anywhere.
See, what the "boyfriend" did was wrong. He shouldn't have forwarded the pictures. But without a sick culture that made this girl ashamed of her body, this wouldn't have gone as far as it did and wouldn't have resulted in her death.
Speaking for myself, running around in the nude would be a shameful thing to visit upon the innocent, or even the squeamish.
Ah, so it's the"culture" that's sick, mmm? Consider this. It may not be that the culture, nor you, nor any of us are "sick". It's just the way we, and it, are. Would to G*d, the gift he gee us, to see ourselves, as others see us. And it wasn't her body the girl was ashamed of, it was that her nakedness was now exposed to all, and it was meant only for the eyes of one. Loses it value. Becomes common. No longer special. Shame is a strange thing. Animals do no have it, only humans. It's because we can think beyond eating, sleeping, and procreating. Without shame, without regret, we are no more than animals. Sort of like the SS. One of the worse examples.
Sean said... "...we can think beyond eating, sleeping, and procreating. ..."
Speak for yourself. In this neo-marxist paradise, I can find little else worthy of my time.
/kidding, sorta...
DD
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