Slippery slope @ Columbia
 

Ah, the progressive lib defense......why not, both consenting adults, with a redef of marriage etc, etc,...and a Columbia Professor no less...another stellar educator, wonder what his attitude is in the classroom....



The lawyer representing a professor charged with incest with his 24-year-old daughter has questioned why the alleged affair has been made public.

David Epstein was charged last week with one count of incest for what was allegedly a consensual three-year sexual relationship with his daughter.

The political science professor at Columbia University, 46, allegedly slept with her between 2006 and 2009.

Epstein, who specialises in American politics and voting rights, is also said to have exchanged twisted text messages with the woman during their relationship.

Matthew Galluzzo, defending Epstein, has said that even though his daughter had emerged as a victim in the case, she could ‘best be described as an accomplice’.

He told ABCNews.com: ‘Academically, we are obviously all morally opposed to incest and rightfully so.

‘At the same time, there is an argument to be made in the Swiss case to let go what goes on privately in bedrooms.

‘It’s ok for homosexuals to do whatever they want in their own home. How is this so different?

‘We have to figure out why some behaviour is tolerated and some is not

The line in the sand
 

The line in the sand keeps getting drawn closer and closer........................

Just got this response from a liberal nutcase that I know...

"What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom is not your business or mine. No slippery slope to that.



I don't care if they are father/daughter, they can have sex. They can not have a child, because we believe that in-breeding causes birth defects and the child didn't ask to be born. That involves a third party. But just between them. It's no one's business but their own."

This is the primary argument for defining marriage in its age old traditional form...once it becomes "whatever' you get 'whatever'

Ahhh.

Must be a NAMBLA supporter as well.

TR

No, he is not. He is a lib progressive and his position is if you are of legal age whatever you do behind closed doors is your business....incest included.

Damn! I tried to follow this logic train and I met myself coming around the bend :eek: That sort of thinking just validates A. MacLeish's (a liberal thinker BTW) warning in "Man's Revolt Against Himself".

I'm guessing your friend would argue "If it's OK with Woody Allen, then why not?"

We're doomed, Brother if these chuckleheads continue to procreate. I thought that level of stupid would naturally be self-annihalting.

Shit, I'm starting to rant. It's Friday night and I'm gonna have a drink - maybe several;)

The last sentence was mine about trad marriage, just noticed that....maybe that thru you off.

True tho that the lib progressive attitude is unreal....my 'gut' tells me that Daddy screwing his daughter is a bad thing, regardless of reaching the age of maturity....maybe that's it, libs have no guts.

Um, I'm willing to bet they weren't asleep. At least not all night.

And ... THIWWP.

If you've seen dad, you might not want to see daughter. ;)

Pat

Looking into this story I found it seems to have originated around May 25, 2011 after Epstein copped a plea in New York Criminal Court that reduced the initial Felony 3rd Degree Incest charge to a mere Misdemeanor.

So he copped more then a feel for 3 years with his daughter, then copped a plea deal and like Ms. Boudin, Mr. Epstein is still gainfully employed by Columbia.


In comparison Jerry Sandusky is doing time, Rutgers gave Mike Rice the boot because of a violent outburst.


Mr. Epstein Wiki's Articles of Deletion is an interesting read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...vid_L._Epstein


Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive119

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...vid_L._Epstein

Moral relativism in full bloom......incest is no different that gay sex, kinda sorta, you get it don't you.
If sexual proclivity is predestined...you are 'born that way'...then pedophilia is just another normal human expression, kinda sorta, you get it don't you.
It is all the same.

Given over to a reprobate mind.
When people want a Godless existence badly enough, they get it.

Romans 1:28-32

And down the rabbit hole we go! :eek: This trend of moral relativism reminds me of why I left the Unitarian Church.

Some personal background: I was raised Episcopalian and as most of you probably have deduced by now, I have developed a personal philosophy that is highly influenced by Ayn Rand and can best be characterized as a conservative libertarian philosophy.

So back to my point: As some of you may know, Unitarian services are lay led, not unlike the Quakers in that respect. Well, after years of hearing the virtues of Tolerance, I led a service pointing out the importance of personal responsibility and critical thinking in a philosophy that emphasizes personal liberty and the right of self-determination. I pointed out that being ethical is very different from being moral. Situational ethics applies, situational morality is an oxymoron. In that vein, I promoted the virtue of Intolerance and the ability to discriminate between what is right and what is wrong irrespective of the situation.

Well, you would have thought that I just pissed in everyone's Cornflakes :D

I don't think they missed me when I never went back:p

Ain't it the truth. :mad:

I don't understand how people who claim to be libertarians cannot feel the same way. If I want to have upside down sex with my sister using ice cubes, whistles and glitter paint, it should be OK; as long as we are both consenting adults.

Now, if you don't subscribe to the libertarian ethic, other points can be made; especially when one brings religion into the fold (which I feel has no place in government).

I subscribe to the Oliver Wendel Holmes style ethic where "my right to swing my fist ends at your nose." Pedophilia does not really encompass this in that it directly affects a non-consenting minor and is therefore encroaching upon said minor's ability to live life unmolested. Morality IS relative. Go to Acholi land, tribal areas in Pakistan and rural China and tell me that morality is not relative. Morality is based on norms and memes and these differ from culture to culture and even family to family.

I may not personally agree with these adults' choices in recreational activities but they are affecting nobody but themselves and thus, I am fine with it.

So, incest is OK with you?

In principle I agree with you. However, the morality we are discussing here is within our culture. As predominantly a Judea-Christian culture we, as a society, abide by Judea-Christian defined morality. If a family within our culture, decides that incest is OK with them, they certainly have the right to make that decision. However, there is a consequence to that decision that they must be willing to accept as well.

I fail to see how morality can be relative within a culture. If that were the case then the society would be amoral. I agree that morality can be relative between cultures. As SF soldiers we certainly could not survive very long if we failed to recognize that and carried around judgments about other cultures.;)

It's only a matter of time before people will be legally marrying their pets and livestock.


The Trojan Couch....

Between consenting adults? Yes.

While this incestuous case is very wrong, let's be correct in our statements.

Mike Rice was fired from his coaching position at Rutgers for more than "a violent outburst"! It if was "A" violent outburst, it was one that lasted a lonnnnng time.

This country was founded on freedom of religion and the implication of that is that if I don't want to subscribe to the religion of the majority, I don't have to. It sucks when people don't live the way you do sometimes, but just think if the tables were turned and you lived in the United States of Homoerotica and you weren't allowed to have sex with a woman. Would that suck? Yeop.

If we subjugate others because they don't follow our religious ideals, we are taking a huge flaming shit on what this Nation was created as; a free nation. For a modern example, try living as a Christian in a muslim nation. I don't want that. I don't want that a hell of a lot more than I don't want some people doing kinky shit in their bedrooms...

I see your point to a certain extent, but I'm curious as to which religions find incest acceptable in this Country, and how does a person delineate between right and wrong without cut-and-dried rules?

Murder is as wrong as a dad screwing his daughter. Are you saying murder between two consenting adults should be OK? How do you differentiate which laws should be dissolved and which kept intact?

It's in the same class of wrong as is homosexual marriage, IMO.

This is a really good discussion! At the risk of creating a cross-thread point, I stated in the "Planned Parenthood Official...." thread that we should not attempt to legislate morality and a couple of the Brothers called me out on that statement. I mention this here because I think the point you are making and what I meant by that statement are the same thing, although I did not state what I meant very well.

Morality in a society is defined by its dominant theology. Now, we are also a society that believes in the secular Rule of Law and those secular laws stem, at least in part, from the theology (as Dusty so succinctly said "when Moses humped those two rocks down the mountain"). Throw in the belief in the sanctity of the individual and we begin to take a ride down the rabbit hole to a place where things are not so clear cut.

To illustrate my point, MR2 commented that murder was immoral (sorry MR2 if I am taking license here, but I really am trying to make a point). Ostensibly this stems from the commandment "Thou shall not kill". Well, that cannot be strictly adhered to - is killing in self-defense, defense of others, war, etc, immoral? So, we made a special case - murder is immoral and therefore, there are instances where killing is not immoral, but actually can be a moral act.

We now have transgressed into the realm of ethics. It can be ethical to kill but still immoral in the strict theological sense, i.e. situational ethics and not situational morality.

So that the MODs don't flogg me for this cross-thread point, I will now attempt to bring this back to topic:p

Our system of governance attempts (brilliantly so IMO) to modulate the obvious tyranny that evolves from a strict interpretation of moral law and balance the sanctity of individual liberty with the need for a moral compass in a civilized society. At this juncture in our secular law incest is illegal. As we make each exception to moral law (as our Judea Christian society defines it) it becomes easier to rationalize the next exception. Extending that line of thinking, we really go down the rabbit hole and nothing has any meaning because everything is relative. No society can remain in any organized or recognizable form in that case and that is the Achilles heal of a libertarian philosophy.

Keeping all those divorce lawyers on retainer could bankrupt PETA.

I APOLOGIZE BUT IM A PANTHEIST
 

If you believe death leads to immediate rebirth as some starving soon to be infested with worms, starved, infected, abused, kidnapped and forced into soldiery or slavery....
I think you can see where i'm going with this, out of the billions of idiots on this cosmic piece of dust we Nacirema are on the "Lucky" end of the Shit-Sandwich------Mid 50------Industrialized Nations
scale of average quality of life in a region.

So from my perspective I could care less about this sick weirdo and his equally twisted daughter EXCEPT for the following - doesn't this set a dangerous precident for the sick bastard who molests his own kids... "well i can't wait till Suzie turns 18, it means i can finally kiss her on the mouth when we go out for a date!"

I mean really guys, isn't that the scarier bit of this weird slippery slope? $5 says 21 wasn't the first time this asshole dipped his wick in his own daughter. Sick fuck.

The correct translation is, ”Thou shalt not do murder”. A tiny bit different. ;)

Pat

I'm pretty much with Dusty. I have a few questions.

Accidents happen.
1.Who pays for the two headed child if there are birth defects?
2, Do consents adults have to consider damage to third parties? Mommy/wife/ex-wife.

My opinion is if you do something only you and your partner are responsable for the outcome and cost of the outcome. Since in the US today other people are partially responsable for the cost of bad behavior then they have a vote in the activity too.

Let them pay for themselves; bring back Freak Shows! ;)

Pat

Undocumented Common-Law Sex-Ed Mentoring - I'm sure it's tucked away in the sequestering bill somewhere. :rolleyes:

Richard :munchin

Well, therein lies the rub. We, as a Nation have gone so far towards making everyone equal that the original concept of the formation of our Nation is impossible to implement at this juncture. With Obama care, I don't want people to smoke or drink as it will mean I have to pay more. What would be a whole lot better is for people to be responsible for themselves and to take care of themselves and their friends and family.

People are CREATED equal. This does not mean that they are equal when they are adults. I have generally kicked ass with my life and have plenty of money saved up at a young age, take pride in my education and continue it at every juncture and nurture an excellent relationship with my family all while being in really damn good shape. Problem is, BECAUSE I rock, I have to suffer because people want to force me to subsidize others' general lack of kickassitivity.

I am not naive in that I think that my ideals (the Nation's ideals really) could be implemented today. I do think it is what we have to strive for and therefore, many of the transformations we have seen in the last 3 decades need to be repealed. I long await the age of personal responsibility where being kick-ass is rewarded with financial security and happiness and my burden for being non-kickass is mine and mine alone.

Reminds me of Atlas Shrugged really.

Along the same lines as this discussion:

Attachment 24917

As I have said before, there are many John Galts here and this is Galt's Gultch.;)

Hang in there Brother. :lifter

Societies are held together by common values which are enforced by the threat of being ostracized.
Empires, from warlords to world-spanning, are held together by the threat of force (government).

A society holds people out if they dont adhere to a certain standard (~religion).
An empire holds people in with force and places them within a hierarchy (natural trend of all government).


The Navajo are an excellent example of a people held together by common values rather than government.
Their traditions (~laws) are no less carefully designed than our own Constitution.

In their case, incest laws were designed to prevent a "ruling class" and the tyranny which follows.

Common values don't have to be a religion. The common values in this nation were supposed to be freedom but we are letting that one get away from us I fear.

Agreed, that's why I put "~" in front of "religion".
However, freedom only works when the people restrain themselves.

Freedom without self-restraint is anarchy.

The founders often commented (Fed papers etc) that a free society would only work with self restraint...the Judeo/Christian morality was the construct they embraced as it was a constant among that group and in the Colonies.
Constant redefinition of wrong/right...what is good/bad...moral relativism on each and any belief system will destroy a self restrained free society.
A free society may not have the wherewithal to adjust or to compensate for that downward spiral.
Within self restraint and freedom of expression there is a happy medium. The self restraint creates that happy medium, without it......

I don't really subscribe to the Judeo-Christian foundation of our country. The founding fathers mentioned God and some of the principles they utilized are found in the Bible (as they are also found in the Koran) but really, most of the documentation is relatively devoid of religion.