Should this guy have served time?

I don't see the conflict of interest. It wasn't a case about gay marriage; it was a case about statutory rape. But the "victim" was very nearly the age of consent, and there may have been other mitigating factors as well.You're looking at a relatively light sentence for sex that was rape only in the stautory sense, and trying to grasp at a straw to "prove" the judge had a conflict of interest, but the homosexual advocacy is a stretch, at the very least.

But that wasn't the defendant, was it?If you think you've made the conflict of interest clear, please try again. So, what you're saying is, judges can't participate in politics? Judges leave their citizenships behind when they don the robes? Or is it just that you don't believe judges should be allowed to participate in politics you don't agree with?There's a pretty high standard for demanding that a judge recuse themselves from a case; generally it requires proof of a highly prejudicial, personal relationship between the judge and either the defendant or the plaintif. It's a big deal to me when a teacher has sex with a student, or when an adult has sex with a young teen; while these relationships aren't by definition coercive, sexual politics involved with disparities of power are always complicated, and what may appear to be consent is often coercion. So I do find the relationship troubling.But being gay has nothing to do with it, that I can see. And your article hardly has all the facts, Like I said, it may simply be that the judge did not find the 15-year-old's story credible, or felt that the case for statutory rape was weak, or she may not even believe in the idea that you can prosecute rape without a complaining witness. But you don't give any indication that there's a real conflict of interest here, or that it has anything to do with homosexuality. You're just smearing the name of this judge on the Internet.

That's not a conflict of interest. Attourneys, being officers of the court, regularly develop professional friendships with judges, and vice-versa.If she were friends with the plaintif, that's one thing. Friends with counsel for the plaintif? Common.And, the what of the plaintif? In what sense did the plaintif have a "cause"?

How could we possibly know? How would we distinguish her "consent" from coercion? She certainly wouldn't be able to.How reasonable is it to suggest that a 7-year-old would want to have sex with an adult man? How many 7-year-olds wind up having sex with anybody on their own initiative? If this is reasonable behavior, why don't we see 7-year-olds trying to have sex with each other more often?Just some questions. Not trying to defend ages of consent, but rather, detection of coercion. What is coercion, in your view? Have you ever told me? Can coercion ever be based not on the threat of physical violence, but merely on the disparity of power between two people who aren't peers?

To determine rape. If you're drawing a dichotomy between consensual sex and violent rape, that's a false dichotomy. I don't think you're doing that on purpose, but this would be another classic example of you almost completely failing to be clear. Fair enough. All I know about the case has been from outraged conservative talk show hosts, so effectively, I know nothing. Oh, I'm sure we could get her to say "I didn't want to do it", if we asked in the right way; I'm sure that we could also get her to say "I wanted to do it" if we asked in the right way, as well.Maybe you don't talk with a lot of 7-year-olds? It's next to impossible to accurately interview children at that age because they're very good at picking up on what they're "supposed" to say or do, and an adult can very easily lead them to the answer that they want, sometimes without even knowing it. It takes a trained professional to do the interrogation, and even then, the testimony of a child is always suspect, perhaps unless they're talking to another child. Full-on penetrative intercourse to at least one participant's orgasm. That's what we're talking about; not mutual masturbation, or fondling, or exploration. Is that something we see commonly among 7-year-olds? Depends on what section of the video store you're in, I guess. I'm not convinced about that; I'm particularly less convinced after reading about a judge who both threw out a legitimate rape conviction and charged the victim with filing a false report based on his own subjective opinion that she didn't seem to demonstrate enough "harm." Keep in mind that a common reaction to extremely traumatic events is an almost perfect outward appearance of calm. Also, the statute of limitations for rape is typically a few years. Waiting around to see if "harm" eventually manifests violates the suspect's constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial, so your "harm" construct would appear, at best, to be legally useless and at worst, a miscarriage of justice.

I guess I don't understand. By definition, rape is unconsensual sex. Therefore establishing consent, or the lack of same, is the critical basis for prosecuting rape.Are you defining "rape" in a differentway than the law does? If consent is irrelevant to you then I don't understand what you mean when you say "rape." That didn't come through in your post at all, which is why I asked. You seemed to be lining up for an assertion that, as long as he didn't commit physical assault as well, we can safely conclude that the sex was consensual.Like I said, I'm sure this is just an example of how poorly you often communicate your ideas. If you could go back and elucidate the part of your post that I've been referring to, I'd appreciate it. I think you've missed the point, again. The point is not that a well-trained interviewer can control a child's thoughts; only that they have to be very careful to avoid leading the child to the conclusion that they want to hear. It's a lot like the "recovered memory" movement - poor interview techniques actually implanted the "memories" of childhood ritual abuse that they had hoped to uncover. I'm not shifting the goalposts. I'm clarifying what activities I meant by "sex." Full-on penetrative intercourse to at least one participant's orgasm. Answer the question. Is that something we see a lot of 7-year-olds engaged in? I don't have kids so I don't know. You claim to have some knowledge on the subject, so I'm asking you. Do we see that, often? I wasn't being clear, so naturally you assumed I meant third-base kind of stuff. So let me be clearer. Full-on penetrative intercourse to the point of at least one person's orgasm. Do a lot fo 7-year-olds do that, or appear to have any interest in it? I dunno. A quick google came up with about a thousand links for "retard porn." Didn't actually see any, though. Just people who thought that was a funny phrase. If it's just the violence you're concerned about, why have "rape" be a crime at all? Why not just prosecute on the assault that occured during what would be, to you, most likely a completely consensual act of sex?

From what I understand, sexual abuse took place over a period of multiple years. But that's just what I've gleaned about the case from the breathless rightie talk show hosts, so, you know. Caveat emptor.Now that I understand what you're saying, I agree. Sure. A defense attourney, for instance, could get a child to assert that it was all made up, if the child had not been adequately prepared by the prosecution to testify. "No", was the answer, I presume? No, obviously they can and do; I just don't know if they make porn about it. I presumed your question was rhetorical, and I was being facetious. Then I guess I didn't know what you meant by "sex laws." Did you simply mean laws that criminalize certain sex acts, regardless of the consent of the participants? Like, say, statutory rape?

Well, no, it isn't. You've just told me that you don't think it happens often, which is what I asked.I'd say I was exactly right on. If you don't think that's the answer you gave then you didn't understand the question. If you believe it's simply a matter of mental capacity, then the term "puberty" is meaningless. Do pre-pubescents, in your experience, regularly experience libido and sexual desire? Fair enough. I think there's still a worthy debate on whether or not statutory rape laws constitute a moral law or just a particularly ham-handed attempt at protection - probably both - but I agree with your position.

And you said you didn't know how frequent it was, which implies not frequently at all. If it happened often, you'd know. We all would. So you did answer my question. No, just not often. That was, after all, the question that I asked. Not "does it ever happen?" But "does it often happen?" You told me that it doesn't happen often. Which is what I asked. As often as, say, post-pubescents. As often as, say, adults, who we have no question accepting that they have sexual desires, and would consent to such activites if they felt so inclined, etc. Often enough that we would find it reasonable that a given 7-year-old would consent to full-on penetrative intercourse with an adult male to the point of his orgasm.You know, "often". It's a common word in English. The fact that you're suddenly ignorant of what it means is a pretty transparent clue that you're engaged in another one of your evasion games. You seem pretty confident asserting that it happens "often", after just asking me what I meant by it. What do you mean by it?

Oh, shit! Holmes thinks I'm not cool!Anyway, here's a group of people who I would be very interested to have their reactions to your idea that their consent was essentially worthless. Get Cash Now - Instant Cash When You Need It Most

Don't bother. I presented the exact same point to Holmes, and his response was to try to tell me that it's so common for a 7-year-old to want to have sex with someone that we shouldn't even bother with ideas of "consent." The little slut must have wanted it, after all.That poor man, to have been led on so.