Australian Judge: "Incest, paedophilia 'like being gay'"

[Bill the Cat]

By definition, you can't start a family unit with people with whom you're already in a family unit. .

That's not true. You can marry a step-sibling in all 50 states in the US, despite being in the same legal "family unit"

Gay people, on the other hand, are attracted only towards people of the same sex; their only potential spouses will always be legally forbidden to them in certain areas unless that legislation changes. That's inequality.

Unless they marry someone of the opposite sex and live in a marriage based on friendship and mutual respect... or is marriage only about the sex in your eyes?

[Shadow Templar]

I explicitly said that I don't use that as an argument or criterion.

Interesting. I seem to remember you saying:

[...]the argument has always been that there are no good reasons to legally forbid gay adults to marry a consenting gay adult[...]

At first it seemed as if you were talking about there being no good reason to legally forbid someone to marry. Sorry if I misread that. Then are you saying that the reason this is inequality is only because of the sexual orientation? You can be unequal toward gay adults, but not toward other adults not identified by their sexual orientation?

their only potential spouses will always be legally forbidden to them in certain areas unless that legislation changes. That's inequality.

Or are you saying that if I deny you the ability to marry a few specific people (your sisters), then that's fine. But if I forbid you to marry a bunch of different people(all other homosexual males), then that's inequality. Then I'm curious: what percentage of people do I need to forbid you to marry before it starts becoming inequality?

[tabibito]

That's not true. You can marry a step-sibling in all 50 states in the US, despite being in the same legal "family unit"



Unless they marry someone of the opposite sex and live in a marriage based on friendship and mutual respect... or is marriage only about the sex in your eyes?

I think even the orthodox churches and the church of Rome don't consider it a marriage until it has been consummated though. ... Could be wrong of course.

[Shadow Templar]

I think even the orthodox churches and the church of Rome don't consider it a marriage until it has been consummated though. ... Could be wrong of course.

How do they defend that position?

[Darth Executor]

Yes it does. By definition, you can't start a family unit with people with whom you're already in a family unit. That's like trying to sit down in a chair in which you're already sitting.

Funny, used to be that by definition you can't start a family unit without a husband and a wife. The definition argument isn't something POZ advocates accepted, so I don't see why we should accept it from you.

[Carrikature]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/austral...gay-judge-says

Source: stuff.co.nz

A Sydney judge has compared incest and paedophilia to homosexuality, saying the community may no longer see sexual contact between siblings and between adults and children as "unnatural" or "taboo".

District Court Judge Garry Neilson said just as gay sex was socially unacceptable and criminal in the 1950s and 1960s but is now widely accepted, "a jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now 'available', not having [a] sexual partner".

He also said the "only reason" that incest is still a crime is because of the high risk of genetic abnormalities in children born from consanguineous relationships "but even that falls away to an extent [because] there is such ease of contraception and readily access to abortion".

Judge Neilson made the extraordinary and bizarre comments in the case of a 58-year-old man, known for legal reasons as MRM, who is charged with repeatedly raping his younger sister in the family's western Sydney home in 1981.

The man had earlier pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting his sister when she was 10 or 11 years old in 1973 or 1974 after police recorded a telephone conversation between the siblings in July 2011 in which he admitted to having sexual contact with her when she was "a kid".

But he has pleaded not guilty to the charge of sexual intercourse without consent, with an alternative charge of incest, regarding the 1981 events.

On April 7 a jury was empanelled and the Crown Prosecutor requested the jurors be told of the earlier misconduct to show MRM had a tendency to have a sexual interest in and have sexual intercourse with his sister.

The Crown argued that without the background information, the jury might find it hard to understand why MRM began raping his sister "out of the blue" and why she did not report it to her parents or police.

In the mid-1970s MRM had warned her not to tell their parents because they had just lost another son in a car crash and she remained fearful of upsetting her parents when the abuse recommenced in 1981.

But Judge Neilson refused to admit the evidence, saying the sexual abuse which had occurred when the girl was 10 or 11 and the youth was 17 occurred in a different context to the sex which happened when she was 18 and he was 26. By 1981, she had had sexual relationships with two men and had a young child.

"By that stage they are both mature adults. The complainant has been sexually awoken, shall we say, by having two relationships with men and she had become 'free' when the second relationship broke down," Judge Neilson said.

"The only thing that might change that is the fact that they were a brother and sister but we've come a long way from the 1950s ... when the position of the English Common Law was that sex outside marriage was not lawful."

He went on to say incest only remains a crime "to prevent chromosomal abnormalities" but the availability of contraception and abortion now diminishes that reason.
[article continues]

© Copyright Original Source

The prosecution are calling for the judge to be excluded from the appeal based on his misogynistic attitude towards the complainant and there are akso calls for the case to be referred to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The judge is an idiot. Sex doesn't suddenly become consensual just because a magic age or number of sexual partners has been reached. The incest comments are extremely peripheral at best.

[Teallaura]

The judge is an idiot. Sex doesn't suddenly become consensual just because a magic age or number of sexual partners has been reached. The incest comments are extremely peripheral at best.

For the purposes of law, oh yes it does - there's no reliable way to determine case by case if Child X gave informed consent and Child Y did not so the law defines an age of consent below which no child can legally give consent (some consent issues can arise at any age - but you have to have some working framework and age does work.) The mentally compromised cannot give consent - this would be true even when the compromise is limited (a nymphomaniac, for example - yes, taking advantage of someone with that condition does constitute rape - heck to prove, of course, but it does) so ONLY if we accept that Predilection A does not constitute a compromise of the person's faculties does the consent argument even make sense within law.

If the person can give consent legally in one case then the argument for them being unable to legally consent rests on circumstance, not capability. His argument is that it makes little sense that Janie can tell little Bobby it's okay when they are both underage but cannot grant the same consent to Jimmy, who is only a few years older. Here he makes a dumb mistake - he's failing to consider the inequity of status - but assuming there's little such inequity, his argument is rational. Wrong, but rational.

I agree he's an idiot - but his legal reasoning isn't idiotic. Amoral and irresponsible, yes; idiotic, no.

[tabibito]

“a jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now ‘available’, not having [a] sexual partner.”

Is this comment invalid? Would a jury necessarily find incest abhorrent? Given that the whole concept of sexual immorality has been turned on its head since the 1950s, and that homosexuality among other formerly unacceptable expressions of sexuality, has been granted acceptable status since then, I think it possible that a jury of today would be more accepting, or at least less censorious, of incest than would a jury of the 1950s.
The judge was deliberating over whether a given charge, concerning action in 1981, of rape could be sustained. The deliberation was restricted in scope to one particular event, in isolation from others. The rape that took place when the woman was a minor was not part of the context for these comments.

New South Wales Attorney-General Brad Hazzard has referred Neilson to the Judicial Commission for a review of the comments, saying, “In my view, the community would be rightly appalled at his reported comments.”

Interesting innit. The community would be appalled at his reported comments. What comments were not reported?
If a charge or rape could not be sustained, the woman - in the 1981 incident - may have consented. In such an event, she would be equally guilty of the crime of incest. Maybe careful deliberation was in order.

[Carrikature]

For the purposes of law, oh yes it does - there's no reliable way to determine case by case if Child X gave informed consent and Child Y did not so the law defines an age of consent below which no child can legally give consent (some consent issues can arise at any age - but you have to have some working framework and age does work.) The mentally compromised cannot give consent - this would be true even when the compromise is limited (a nymphomaniac, for example - yes, taking advantage of someone with that condition does constitute rape - heck to prove, of course, but it does) so ONLY if we accept that Predilection A does not constitute a compromise of the person's faculties does the consent argument even make sense within law.

If the person can give consent legally in one case then the argument for them being unable to legally consent rests on circumstance, not capability. His argument is that it makes little sense that Janie can tell little Bobby it's okay when they are both underage but cannot grant the same consent to Jimmy, who is only a few years older. Here he makes a dumb mistake - he's failing to consider the inequity of status - but assuming there's little such inequity, his argument is rational. Wrong, but rational.

I agree he's an idiot - but his legal reasoning isn't idiotic. Amoral and irresponsible, yes; idiotic, no.

The judge is preventing evidence because he claims the sexual encounters are in a different context. The legal age isn't the only issue involved in determining whether or not a sexual encounter is consensual. Reaching age of consent does not establish that all sexual encounters following are consensual, and the events of other consensual encounters doesn't mean the ones under consideration are consensual. I don't see any way in which that's not idiotic reasoning even in a legal sense.

[Teallaura]

The judge is preventing evidence because he claims the sexual encounters are in a different context. The legal age isn't the only issue involved in determining whether or not a sexual encounter is consensual. Reaching age of consent does not establish that all sexual encounters following are consensual, and the events of other consensual encounters doesn't mean the ones under consideration are consensual. I don't see any way in which that's not idiotic reasoning even in a legal sense.

I'll get back to you... Busy day...