"History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. The World War II relocation-camp cases, and the Red Scare and McCarthy-era internal subversion cases, are only the most extreme reminders that when we allow fundamental freedoms to be sacrificed in the name of real or perceived exigency, we invariably come to regret it." -Justice Thurgood Marshall, from his dissenting opinion in Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Association, 489 U.S. 602, 635 (1989)
|
-"We would not sanction criminal punishment of an individual with a criminal history of bank robbery simply because she or he stood in the parking lot of a bank and thought about robbing it, [or] punishment of a drug addict who stands outside a dealer's house craving a hit." "He engaged in a sort of psychiatric brinksmanship by placing himself in a situation that increased substantially the possibility of his acting on these impulses." (read lifting ban, appeal, opposing viewpoint) -"When does a snapshot of a mother breast-feeding her child become kiddie porn? Ask the Richardson police." (read more) -"A San Antonio man is in court, accused of taking pictures of a naked teenager on the Riverwalk. He says it was art for a class project, prosecutors say it's child porn." (read more) -The man was convicted of child porn and registered as a sex offender because the jury saw the concept of teen nudity as "lewd": "'In my eyes it was a minor who was completely nude, and it was disturbing to me from the moment I saw them,' juror Marc Villarreal said. 'I think everyone in this jury agrees with me, and we never thought of it as art from the very beginning.'" (read news, opinion) -"The scheme was thwarted when federal agents arrested Frazier last fall. A federal judge ordered restitution Wednesday based on a formula of how much DirecTV and EchoStar would have lost had the scheme succeeded, or $900 million." (read more) -"The defense argued that Veches sucked the boys' toes, but not for sexual gratification." "We're putting a guy away for doing something that the children may not have known they were being victimized." (read more) -Poll - Should the government notify the public of an adult attracted to young children who has never been convicted of a sex crime involving children? Results - Yes, even if it means lie detectors, searches, interrogations and forced psychological analysis of everyone. (see poll) -"A 58-year-old Nova man accused of possessing child pornography was declared a sexual predator Monday morning by Ashland County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Runyan. Bruce E. Piker also was sentenced to five years in prison. When he gets out of prison he'll have to register his address with the local sheriff's department every 90 days for the rest of his life. 'The offender was going down a path that would have led to the sexual or physical harm of others,' Runyan said." (read more) |
The
Freedom To Think Dangerous
Thoughts
written July 10th, 2003 Has the thought of committing a crime ever crossed your mind? No, I'm not saying a crime for the sake of crime, but doing something that happens to be illegal in our society. Perhaps you've wanted to hit your boss out of frustration, steal something because you can't afford it, have sex with someone under the legal age, or any number of other thoughts. They're only in your head, right? Perhaps a little fantasy floats around in there every now and then. That's no crime, is it? Sadly, your thoughts can make you a criminal. The catch is, are they really your thoughts or just what someone else imagines you're thinking? Recently, on Cops, a police officer was shown dressed as a clown in order to capture prostitutes. He drove up to women, asking, "Do you need a ride?" If a woman got into the vehicle, the clown (cop) pressured her for sex, saying how "fine" she was. One woman asked him if he was a cop, but he tactfully denied it. Another woman, though she was understandably afraid, still admitted her desperation, saying, "Give me a room, something to eat. Get me off the street." With that, the officer signaled for backup to move in and arrest the woman. As she was being led away, as with the others, she repeated, "I didn't do anything." "Are you telling me you didn't commit an act of prostitution?" the officer who was leading her away in handcuffs asked coldly. "No," she confessed. "We were just talking." The officer simply put her in the police car. Another one down. The sad truth is that she was completely honest with the officers. While they attempted to deceive her by posing as a good Samaritan and then accusing her of being caught "committ[ing] an act of prostitution," she freely admitted that they were "just talking." Unfortunately, there is no freedom of speech when you can be punished for your thoughts. The problem arises in how we know what someone was thinking. For example, later on in Cops, a female officer stood next to a stop sign, asking the driver of each vehicle that stopped there, "Do you want a date?" If the driver said "Sure," then the officer stated "It's a date," and backup moved in to arrest the driver. Yet, do we really know that every man who replied "sure" at that stop sign knew what "date" was really supposed to mean? And, should we convict him if he did know? A man was sent to prison for five years and charged 900 million dollars to be paid based on a formula of how much DirecTV and EchoStar would have potentially "lost" had his piracy scheme succeeded (read article). However, the scheme never began and nothing was lost or gained. Still, he must pay back what could have been lost by the companies and gained by him. Of course, he doesn't have the money because he never committed the crime. It's not unlike the journalist who posed as a flirtatious thirteen year old to entrap men , who were later tried as though she were thirteen (see also, Precrime: Preventing Crime). Thoughts can be very dangerous, especially when they are not your own. Nowhere can this be seen clearer than in the current child pornography hysteria. In cases of child pornography possession, the media isn't typically shown the photographs, but the prosecution assures us that the images are "clearly erotic and pornographic." Yet, more and more, people are being tried for child pornography for any photos of underage nudity. Anything from pictures of kids in a bathtub to a baby being breastfed can be prosecuted as criminal possessions. You can even receive hundreds of years for mere pictures. And the prosecution would never lie about the seriousness of those "vile" images, would they? What? Lawyers lie? Though, as we see clearly in an article asking if a picture of a naked baby is pornographic (see the picture and read the response), lawyers aren't the only ones somehow seeing child abuse occurring in a picture with simple nudity and only one viewable participant. There is no man committing rape in these pictures, but you'd think so if you weren't allowed to see them for yourself. So, you have to wonder why these people hate a photographer for what they see. For example, a senator wants to make teen nudist camps illegal. It's not that anything illegal has happened there, and he admits that fact. It's that he just heard about them and he thinks things could happen. You see, he's imagining sex, fit young bodies in orgies or whatever, but most of the teen nudists are just average teens who look average too. Only, in his mind, they are sexy, luring dirty old men to spy on them and take photographs or masturbate while watching. Some people call for investigation into and even suggest the arrest of the adults who run the private camps. After all, they must have dirty thoughts like those evil child photographers/pornographers. Yet, before anyone makes such accusations, you should ask yourself "Can I read people's minds?" Unless the answer is yes, then you must concede that the thoughts are your own. So, how clean is your mind? What do you find erotic? The most common argument in favor of thought criminalization is the prevention theory. For example, "But shouldn't we stop someone before he strikes?" Before you answer, "Of course," consider this: The moment we prevent or presume choice, we play God. God gave us free will and what man has the right to take that away? We pay for every choice we make. For every action, there is a reaction. For every cause, an effect. There are consequences to everything we do. Those consequences are sometimes positive, negative or both. That's life. It's just like the man who disobeyed police to rescue his dog from a burning building and was promptly arrested for his decision or the man who rescued four children, knowing that he was a wanted man. As his mother put it, "He knew if he got on TV he was going to be arrested." We make choices and we pay the price. We may break a lamp or break the law, but if we prevent action by presuming the future, we remove the liberty and freedom to live that God gave us. We remove life's consequences and its lessons. How do we know what someone will choose to do? Laws to prevent people from hurting themselves or others violate free will because they don't allow for the choice to be made (even if it's the wrong one and we regret it later). For example, arresting someone for possession of something they may or may not use or for planning to meet someone and do certain things together. When the law stops us from making the (sometimes poor) choices that make us human, the law becomes inhumane. Should we pay the same price if we simply think about doing something as if we actually do it? If not, what percentage of the price we would pay for actually committing a crime should we pay? Does it depend on our previous actions, how often we think, how smart we are, or how corrupt the minds are of those trying us? Should we be punished for thinking and thereby encouraged not to think, less we get into trouble? How many of us have been so angry/horny/etc. that we could just... Ah, but it was only a thought. But, what if you planned it out? What if you then had a change of heart? Apparently, thoughts can get you in jail, but, once inside, they can't get you back out. Only action can do that. And it's time we took that action. After all, there's a reason that the Declaration of Independence lists "life" and "liberty" side by side: What is life without liberty? To put it another way, God could easily prevent us from hurting ourselves and others. After all, He's God. But God gave us free will for a very important reason: What's the point of being given life without the freedom to live it?
Previous
| My Thoughts
| Topics | Next
"The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought." (more) |
-"Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah al-Muhajir, supposedly
plotted to build and detonate a radiological 'dirty bomb.' He
is a U.S. citizen. Yet he's being detained by the military --
indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been
charged with any crime." (articles: 1,2,3,4) -Man convicted of "vicarious sexual gratification" (more) -"This means that people can have their liberty taken from them not because of anything they have done, or not so that they can receive medical care, but because of fear that they may do something in the future." (read more -PDF) -"Dangerous individuals who pose a clear threat to public safety could be taken into protective custody without being convicted of a crime. But he added: 'The suggestion of civil detention for people who have paed*phile tendencies but haven't acted on them, begs obvious questions about human rights, and it would probably be unworkable in practice.'" (read more) The Problem (2002, UK): -Police are having trouble proving people are thinking of committing a crime: "He'd have to have said something about sex in order to show intent, even then there's a fair bit of speculation involved." "The chatroom record would also show if they were asking questions about whether a child has a girl or boyfriend, which would also be highly suspicious." (read more) The solution (2003, UK: -Grooming (talking to) children made illegal: "John Wadham, director of Liberty, warned that the civil order would amount to prosecuting people for what someone thinks they might do, and not for something they have actually done." (read more) -"As the court pointed out, laws against child pornography are meant to punish adults who abuse children in the production of such material; but laws against adults who appear to be children, or against computer-generated images, only punish thoughts that we find icky." (read more) -A photograph that is either legal or illegal based on the thoughts and desires of those who might view it (UK): "Nobody wants to prevent loving parents and guardians from taking delightful pictures of young children running naked in the garden or on a beach. They can be charming pictures to treasure for a lifetime. But equally, this type of innocent picture can be dynamite in the hands of a paed*phile. We need to ask ourselves in these borderline cases if an innocent picture of a naked child would fuel the sexual appetite of a paed*phile. The answer would clearly be, ‘Yes, it would’." (read more) |