The Sex Laws in America
The crux: Levi, Bristol Palin’s fiancee, would be a felon and a sex offender in Arizona, and many other states, based simply on what is now a matter of public record.
Posted by Brad @ 1:39 pm on September 5th 2008
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That’s certainly an argument that Arizona’s laws (and those of other states and, for that matter, countries) are wrong and Alaska’s (and those of other states and, for that matter, countries) are right.
I am not entirely sure that the argument requires Bristol Palin in it in general, because even though, obviously, it’s timely, it’s hardly as if the argument requires it unless it’s aimed at Palin’s evangelical supporters in other states, in which case I can see the point (but it’s not written that way, it seems to me).
I thought that a lot of those states only take those actions in the instance that the parents of the younger party make a complaint to the police, though?
Comment by Adam — 9/5/2008 @ 2:01 pm
In terms of enforcement, that’s probably true. Either if there’s a complaint, or if the police decide for one reason or another to take action based on whatever criteria they choose.
The legality of it, as far as I’m aware, isn’t necessarily dependent on that however. Whether or not you can give parental consent to your daughter being statutorily raped, I do not know.
The use of Bristol in this case is to make the case using a very prominent example. You can make the case generically, of course, and it’s just as logical, but when people can fill in the blanks themselves, they’ll most often use the worst case example (sleazy 18 year old stalker taking advantage of sweet and innocent 14 year old, etc), and that’s, incidentally, how these laws tend to get passed. Most people would not pass them if the Palins were their example.
Comment by Brad — 9/5/2008 @ 2:58 pm
Legality as per the law, yeah, it has to be illegal in that sense, although in the practical sense those issues are decided through being charged and getting a trial. So legally, you’re innocent until proven guilty, but on the other hand, your factual innocence or guilt is nothing to do with a court verdict (although one hopes, across the board, court verdicts are strongly correlated with, and caused by, the factual guilt or innocence, with errors on the side of returning innocent verdicts for factually guilty people).
So, yeah, it depends on what you mean by ‘illegal’ and ‘felon’ (in particular, it seems to me that you aren’t a ‘felon’ until convicted).
As for the use of Palin, it would, as I said, make sense to me if it was aimed at those amongst Palin’s evangelical supporters or her general sympathisers who might support the laws on sexual consent ages and the penalties for breaching them (including sex offender registration). However, it didn’t read like that to me (humorous euphemisms for sexual intercourse — ‘horizontal mambo’ — didn’t seem aimed at any of those people at all and, whilst I’m all in favour of humorous euphemisms for sexual intercourse I wouldn’t be heaping them on Bristol Palin, who’s had enough of that crap right now, I would say). I guess I don’t think that it was ‘respectful’ or ‘poignant’
Comment by Adam — 9/5/2008 @ 3:02 pm
Surely that’s pretty dryly academic for the point here. Heh.
Comment by Brad — 9/5/2008 @ 3:05 pm