bob000555

Invoking interstate commerce on health care never made much sense to me anyway considering you can't buy health insurance from a provider based in a different state.

True. But, recently the Supreme Court's interpretation of the commerce clause has been broad enough that they ruled that it allowed the Feds to arrest someone growing and consuming their own marijuana, which wasn't commerce, much less interstate commerce.

see: Gonzales v. Raich

Kudos on getting this right.

 

I've been reading a bit about this (admittedly I haven't been following the case closely) and I don't quite understand how taxing individuals for not engaging in a specific kind of commerce (whether they think its in the public interest or not - though this is a separate issue) doesn't fall under the commerce clause. It seems that using taxes as penalties to get people to buy what congress wants sets a bad precedent (products that congressmen/women own stock in, for example) in addition to violating the "spirit" of why the bill was rejected under argument of the commerce clause.

 

I'm trying not to be too reactionary on this.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you don't get why it doesn't fall under the commerce clause. The commerce clause simply grants Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce, the argument from the opponents of the law was that the commerce clause doesn't specifically allow Congress to regulate commerce that does not yet exist. Chief Justice Roberts agreed with them on this but said that it didn't matter because the power to lay and collect taxes was sufficient to allow congress to enact the legislation. (Strictly speaking, under the doctrines of judicial restraint and constitutional avoidance, the Court probably shouldn't have spoken on the dormant commerce issue because it wasn't strictly necessarily to resolve the question the law's constitutionality. Though maybe they chose to rule on it because it was one of the questions they granted a writ of certiorari on.) Congress only needs to have authority under one section of the Constitution for its enactment of a law to be upheld.

I do agree with you, though, that the precedent that Congress can create new taxes and make them contingent on basically what ever it wants has a pretty large potential for abuse.

Just to point out, my post fairly accurately predicted the reasoning the Roberts used in the majority opinion (reasoning which almost no one else predicted). Either I'm a genius, or Roberts reads SFN (or perhaps both).

There's also the minor fact that your theory appears to rely on the existence of ether (by which you appear to mean luminiferous aether) which was pretty definitively proved not to exist way back in 1887. Look up the Michelson Experiment.

Suffice it to say that I would not be at all surprised if the Sixth Circuit decides to rehear the case en banc.

Just to point out, I was right. The case will be reheard en banc and most experts believe that it will be reversed for some of the reasons I pointed out in my earlier post.

http://turtletalk.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/08-1387_documents.pdf

I would think that the null hypothesis is that, excepting societal barriers, men and women will perform equally in all pursuits of academe, of business, and within society in general - has this been shown not to be the case? Is it ever possible to control for societal and cultural pressures and norms? What legitimacy does the opposing view have that is threatened by my pandering?

Actually, there are quite a few good reasons why women would be expected to not do as well as men in some of the fields you mentioned even without societal discrimination.

For one thing, fields like business and politics tend to reward traits like aggression, assertiveness, and confidence, all of which happen to be correlated with testosterone levels.

An even more significant factor that limits the number of women who will be highly successful is greater male variability. This phenomenon occurs across species in virtually all metrics. (The evolutionary reasons for this are fascinating. I'll explain in a footnote below.) It means that in traits like intelligence, males and females have virtually the same average but males have slightly higher variability. This means that males make up a greater share of those with well below average IQ's but also a greater share of those with well above average IQ's. The catch is that the relationship between ability and earnings makes this a pretty good deal for men. For example, you mentioned the field of academia. Academics tend to be much smarter than the average person, and because males are over-represented at both extremes of intelligence, they would be over-represented in fields that draw on those at the extremely high end of the intelligence spectrum (e.g math and science.)

Footnote:

Imagine generating a graph, where on the x-axis you put fitness in a given trait, like muscular strength or speed, and on the y-axis you put the average number of offspring for individuals with that level of fitness. If you were to generate such graphs for males and females in a given species, for most species you would get radically different graphs for a simple reason: in most species males compete for the right to mate with females, and not the other way around. This means that for females with extraordinarily low fitness, there would be few opportunities to mate, because the chance of surviving to would be effected extremely negatively. As females' fitness improved, we would expect the average number of offspring to improve, until the point where ill-fitness is no longer a determent to survival. However, since females are not competing for mates with each other, improved fitness beyond this point would not improve the average number of offspring by much more than the effect of slightly increased survival. Therefore, the graph of female fitness versus average number of offspring would be expected to be logarithmic, with fairly dramatic increases in the lower ranges and then a steady decrease in the slope. On the other hand if we imagine the graph for males of most species, we would again expect almost no offspring for the very unfit specimens, but as fitness improved, the number of mate would not improve very fast, as the relatively unfit males would still be heavily out-competed for mates by more fit males. Once we passed a certain point, we would expect the slope of the graph to increase drastically, as increasingly fit males out-compete less fit males by even more dramatic degrees. Therefore, we would expect the graph of male fitness versus average number of offspring to be exponential.

Now imagine you have a normally-distributed trait that benefits both males and females when its species-wide average increased. Intelligence is an example of such a trait. Imagine what happens to both sexes when you change the variability of the trait. For both sexes, if you increase the variability of the trait you are increasing both the number of well-below-average and well-above-average individuals. Consider the effect this would have on the number of offspring in the next generation. For females, when you increase the number of extremely unfit individuals, you do great harm to the number of offspring generated at the lower end of the spectrum, while at the higher end of the spectrum, increased fitness has little effect on the females' ability to produce offspring, so the upper end of the spectrum does not compensate for the loss at the bottom. For males, increasing variability has the exact opposite effect: the exponential gain in the upper end of the spectrum more than compensates for the increasingly insignificant differences between individuals at the lower end of the spectrum.

Therefore, it would seem that you could optimize the number of offspring by making variability for males high and low for females. As you might guess, this is exactly what nature has done. Not only is variability in many traits influences by sex hormones, but in many traits, in many species, when young are born, variability in most traits is relatively low. When males near sexual maturity and male sex hormone is released in vast quantities, male variability skyrockets. Indeed, this is what happens with IQ in humans. Throughout life, males and females have virtually the same average IQ scores. When young children's IQ's are tested, males and females also have virtually the same variability. However, when they hit puberty, the males' variability increases (a difference in spatial and verbal intelligence also develops, but that's not particularly relevant to this point).

Footnote to the footnote:

The process of the evolution of greater male variability actually had a greater effect on human evolution than on many other species. This is because of the way many primates mate: with a dominant male who virtually monopolizes mating opportunities until a new dominant male arrives. (It is so with many great apes, and it was also true that for most of human evolution, the most common "family structure" was a single male with multiple females.) Going back to the graphs in the previous footnote: this would have little effect on the female graph, but for the male graph the effect would be huge. For non-dominant males, mating opportunities would be extremely rare and so the average number of offspring would remain quite low, until we reached the point at which males would have a decent chance of being dominant, perhaps to standard deviations above the mean, at this point we would see and astronomical jump in the number of average offspring produced. Under such conditions, greater male variability was virtually guaranteed to evolve.

If I'm understanding you correctly, TiredTomato, you want to build an automated vehicle for land, sea and air for your science fair, you're going to be programming the thing, and you're in the process of learning c++. Is that right? Assuming this isn't a joke or an attempt at trolling:

No one has yet pointed out the challenges of the land phase of the thing, so I'll just say that some of the best scientists in the world have been trying for years to build an automated vehicle just for the land, to say nothing of sea and air. After several years and millions of dollars, a team from Carnage Mellon and General Motors built something that can travel at an average of 14mph, and they were surprised it did that well. The challenge you've set for your self is immense, and you should probably be prepared for disappointment. (Google "darpa challenge")

I'll also point out that one of my science fair projects in high school involved solar ovens made out of aluminum foil and it won me a sizable scholarship. Complexity isn't always a good thing, and more complexity than you can handle dooms you to failure.

john; Romney won't be the nominee, but if he were to, would beat Obama, it's that simple in my mind.

 

I'd give Perry a 50% chance today, Bachman about a 30% chance and both will try to get Rubio or Christie for their VP and Palin will run for Jon Kyl's (AZ.) Senate Seat. Ron Paul or Trump may go third party and if so Obama might win.

Do you have any actual basis for that or is it just bald assertion?

All the latest polls show Obama beating all republican challengers (except, for some bizarre reason, for Rudy Giuliani who isn't even running)

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/08/11/gop2012poll.pdf

http://www.democracycorps.com/wp-content/files/dcor120811fq_WEBSITE.pdf

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/08/09/120110/before-declaring-perry-in-2nd.html

The last election prediction I remember you making was years ago when you told us that you were certain that Norm Coleman would beat Al Franken. That prediction smacked of wishful thinking on your part, and this one does too.

ewmon - in the uk a commercial enterprise can be sued for refusing to allow a gay couple the same rights as a hetrosexual couple . that act does not protect non-religious entities - I do not have the time to go through US anti-discrimination law to check whether there are avenues that would allow a gay couple to make a claim.

You're going in circles. I said in the original post that the full text of the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act is available here http://www.dccouncil.washington.dc.us/images/00001/20091008141223.pdf, and that the Act does absolutely nothing to subject anyone to any penalties for discriminating against a gay couple. Whether or not there are other laws subject those who want to discriminate against gays to any penalties is absolutely irrelevant. In the US you can not challenge a given law on the grounds that some other law violates your rights. If there is some law that says people cannot discriminate against gay couples, the Church can raise this argument to challenge that law, but challenging a law that simply allows gays to marry on the grounds that the Church is using to challenge it makes absolutely no sense from a Civil-Procedure prospective, from a constitutional-law prospective or from a logical prospective.

furthermore - government/local authority officials have been removed from their position for refusing to act within their duties on the civil side of marriage when a gay couple was involved. personally I agree with the courts in both these decisions - but to say that "nowhere is anyone forced" is incorrect; perhaps you could confirm that nowhere in the USA, in DC etc are/is correct

I have already explained the process of an "as applied challenge." If anyone is subject to penalties for discriminating against a gay couple despite his religious beliefs, he can claim in Court that the law that subjects him to penalties is unconstitutional as applied to him because it violates his religious liberties under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In addition, ewmon was quite right in stating that its up to the Church to prove that the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act does something to harm their rights. They are the plaintiffs here and as such the burden of proof is on them. Overturning an administrative decision in Court in the US requires the plaintiff to prove that the administrative decision was "arbitrary and capricious"; you've already said that you read the Board of Elections and Ethics decision and found it to be reasonable.

imatfaa - Law making by referendum is not the norm in DC, or anywhere else that I am aware of. The system of checks and balances was not endangered, nor the calculus of policy making. Your confusion may be coming from the Church's rather convoluted recitation of the facts, so I'll summarize for you:

The DC recognizes two methods of lawmaking: the normal legislative process where a law is voted on by the City Council and approved by the Mayor, and the referendum/initiative process. (There are some additional complexities in the law making process due to DC's status as a federal city and the involvement of the United States Congress, but those complexities are not relevant here, at least not yet.) Almost every law is made by the first process, and this law was no exception.

The DC City Council heard and considered testimony from the Catholic Church and other religious organizations. The Catholic Church didn't like the outcome of the normal process so they tried to initiate the extraordinary process of referendum/initiative. They "filed two petitions with the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics: first for a ballot initiative to affirmatively define marriage as between a man and a woman, and then for a referendum to overturn enactment of the same-sex marriage bill."

There was only one problem with this: its not a valid exercise of the referendum/initiative process. The process, like any process is subject to certain rules, and one of those rules says that once the Council has acted to create an anti-discrimination law, that law is not subject to recall by the referendum process. There is a very important historical reason for this rule: during the civil rights era, the Council passed several important laws regrading racial discrimination and the populace reacted by trying to repeal those laws via initiative. The council recognized a tradition that goes back to the Founding Fathers of fearing "rule by the mob" and of protecting the rights of the minority against the whims of the majority. They, therefore, amended the section of the City Charter that deals with referendums to protect anti-discrimination laws from repeal by initiative.

In this case, the Church introduced a referendum and an initiative , and the Board of Elections and Ethics properly ruled that both were subject to the anti-discrimination rule and could not go forward. The Church appealed both decisions to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which has already ruled that the Board acted properly in denying the initiative. Now, in the case regarding the referendum, the Church is raising an argument that makes a mockery of civil procedure, constitutional law, and logic.

http://site.adw.org/pdfs/10SSM_BOEE_RelLib_0205.pdf

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is arguing that DC's new Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act violates Catholics' religious liberty. The paper starts out with the Archdiocese opining that their religious liberties are being taken away but not saying exactly how. At first, I thought the law might have forced ministers to officiate gay marriages. But of course this is not the case. The Archdioceses' complaint is that

A Catholic caterer, for example, should not have to condone a same-sex union by catering the wedding or a marriage counselor should not be required to provide counseling to a same-sex couple if it violates his religious beliefs. Indeed, D.C.’s Human Rights Act, so often cited in support of same-sex marriage, prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion just as strictly as it prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act creates no penalties for discriminating against a gay couple. (the full text of the act is available here: http://www.dccouncil.washington.dc.us/images/00001/20091008141223.pdf) If there are any penalties, they would derive from the Human Rights Act. So, lets make their argument clear: they're arguing that the they could be penalized under the Human Rights Act if they discriminate against a gay couple, and that therefore, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act violates their religious freedoms. Holy nonsequiter, batman!

If Catholics honestly believe their religious freedoms are being violated, there is a legally recognized way to litigate this. If one of these supposedly persecuted caterers were to face penalties under the Human Rights Act, they would be entitled to the affirmative defense that the HRA is unconstitutional as applied to him/her. Arguing that the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act violates religious freedoms makes absolutely no sense either from a procedural or a constitutional prospective.

Lets set aside the fact that their argument runs askew of very basic legal procedure, and look at their underlying argument, which appears to be "If a group's religious beliefs include discriminating against some group, then a law that protects that group from discrimination violates the group's religious freedoms." If the Court were to set that precedent, then under the principle of stare decisis they would be bound to enforce it in future cases, with some pretty ridiculous consequences: Wahabists could bring suit arguing that their religion requires discrimination against women and that laws forbidding sex based discrimination violate their religious freedom. Perhaps most ironically, fundamentalist Muslims could make the case that there has been an active jihad against the Catholic Church since the crusades and that any law which prevents them from discriminating against Catholics (perhaps including murder laws) violates Muslims' religious liberties.

There are some more fundamental problems with the Archdioceses' argument, but I don't want to appear pedantic.

Yeah, it was only a suggestion; the point was to renew conversation about fixing the politics forum. But, I do stand by my position that the right to start new threads in the politics section should be restricted.

Especially in light light of threads like these:

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59183-right-or-wrong-brains-or-brawn/

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59132-logical-argument-to-consider/

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59162-fortunately-most-countries-are-nowhere-near-their-maximum-sustainable-population-sizes/

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59118-just-for-interests-sake/

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59008-wealthy-people/

Quite frankly, the politics forum is drowning in shit and and something needs to be done about it.

Actually, I had read it somewhere in the distant past about George Peabody assisting Baltimore from bankruptcy, but on the Internet, I only find this claim about Maryland. Many sites can be found by googling "George Peabody" Maryland bankrupt, and in particular, one from Maryland's state archives.

O.k. sorry, then. I suppose saying

I've looked around the Internet, but cannot find any other details.

through me off.

I took a break from the forums and came back to find that the politics forum has been subjected to another barrage of utterly moronic tripe. Before this thread got somewhat derailed, the conversation was about weather or not serious changes were needed to prevent such blitzes of stupidity, and what those changes should be. I think its worth renewing that conversation.

Previously, I suggested that the ability to open new threads in the politics forum be restricted to those who have demonstrated the ability for reasoned discourse. DJBruce said he supported the idea.

I think that would fix the problem of threads that are doomed from the beginning to descend into a cacophony of idiocy. But even then the posters who had been posting tripe would still be able to derail and otherwise ruin threads started by trusted users. Fortunately, I think that with the moronic threads gone, it would be easier to maintain the forums. If someone posts something truly moronic in a thread, trusted politics users could remove the post to a new forum perhaps called politics-lite where trusted users could educate the poster on why their post is misguided and help them develop a less bad post for the original thread.

So my over all proposal, is that the politics forums be split into politics and politics-lite.

In politics, only trusted users can start new threads, but anyone with 30 posts can post in them.

When someone posts in politics, an the post is found to be bellow community standards, a moderator moves it to politics-lite. Here, only trusted users and the person who's post was refereed to politics lite can post in the thread. The goal is for the trusted users to help the user develop a post that is up to community standards which can be posted in the original thread in politics.

There really is no need to start new threads for things like this. They just drown out legitimate debate threads and force them to page 2.

There is also the possibility, considering that you can't find a mention anywhere else and that answers.com isn't exactly an academic source, that Maryland was not, in fact, "near bankruptcy."

Interestingly, the term "progressives" derives from those folks who wanted to abandon the land, and progress westward to take new land (hey, it was free! ...and unoccupied). The "conservatives" wanted to stay in place and work to restore the land. Hmmmmm!

Would you happen to have a citation for that claim? It strikes me as being folk etymology.

The word "progressive" was used to mean "characterized by advancement" since c. 1600 and didn't acquire the meaning "characterized by striving for change and innovation, avant-garde, liberal" until 1908.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=progressive

Your case for "conservative" is even weaker. The word " conservatyf" (the old spelling of "conservative") entered the English language in the 14th century and is derived from the French "conservatif." I've personally seen documents using the word to refer to various political philosophies from as early as the 1520's. It acquired its modern meaning from followers of Burke who used it to refer to his philosophy c. 1790. It was used to refer to a British political faction as early as 1830 (and based on documents that I've seen, probably much earlier.)

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=conservative&searchmode=none

Please have some respect for facts.

So far, The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act has been found constitutional by three federal District Court judges and one federal Circuit Court (aka Appeals Court) panel. It has been found unconstitutional by two federal District Court judges and appeals are pending in these cases. If any Circuit Court finds the Act unconstitutional, it would create a circuit split and virtually guarantee that the case would go to the Supreme Court.

Both Courts that found the Act unconstitutional, focused on the “individual mandate” portion of the Act, which requires individuals to purchase health insurance or pay a substantial penalty. Thus far, all analysis of the individual mandate has been under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, with the Government arguing that the individual mandate is authorized by the Commerce Clause and the plaintiffs arguing that the mandate is unregimented, not within the gambit of the Commerce Clause and unconstitutional.

I see a rather large problem with this analysis. Namely, it violates a principle in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence called “constitutional avoidance.” The Supreme Court explained the principle succinctly in its ruling in Clark v. Martinez:

When deciding which of two plausible statutory constructions to adopt, a court must consider the natural consequences of its choice. If one of them would raise a multitude of constitutional problems, the other should prevail.

What this essentially means, is that when asked to pass judgment on the constitutionality of a law, a Court has a multi-step process. First, they must see if they can construe the law in a way that avoids sticky constitutional problems. If they can, than that construction stands, and they do not pass judgment on the law’s constitutionality. If, and only if, they cannot successfully complete step one, they go on to test the constitutionality of the law.

The two Judges who found the Act unconstitutional failed to undertake step one of the analysis in their judgments. (see: Florida et al v. United States Department of Health and Human Services and Commonwealth of Virginia v. Sebelius). This is largely because the United States failed to raise the issue in defending the Act; the Administration wants the Act to be found outright constitutional. But this really should not mater; constitutional avoidance is binding case law on the canon of statutory construction, and therefore, Judges are required to consider it sua sponte even if neither party brings it up.

The question therefore becomes “Is there an alternative construction of the individual mandate that avoids the constitutional muck of the Commerce-Clause analysis?” Because the government wants the Act declared outright constitutional, and the plaintiffs want it declared outright unconstitutional, no significant analysis has been given to this question, but I should say that there is an alternative.

My analysis begins with Congress’ “Power To lay and collect Taxes” found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution and the Sixteenth Amendment’s clarification that taxes may be levied “without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” This means that Congress has the authority to tax individuals.

The next element of my analysis comes from the Necessary and Proper clause of the Constitution which provides that “The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

The power to exempt certain individuals from certain taxes would certainly be a “Necessary and Proper” extension of the “Power to lay and collect Taxes.” Therefore, it is in keeping with existing jurisprudence to say that congress has the power to legislate that there exists a tax, but that those who buy health insurance are exempted from it. Because this is substantially the same as the individual mandate, and because it avoids the complex constitutional questions of other constructions of the individual mandate, the constitutional avoidance doctrine says that Courts can, and indeed must, accept this interpretation of the individual mandate, and decline to find the Act unconstitutional.

I appreciate that.

 

But I think that might be part of the problem I have with this thread. Particular posters made repeated claims that had no bearing in reality, no evidence and no substantiation and concluded incredibly sexist (and a slightly scary) remarks, and while I do see people answer, I think the answers concentrate on the argument as if it's totally valid.

 

As in.. people argue with these arguments as if the only thing that's wrong with them is that they disagree with them. It seems to me that we put these posters on another plane of argument where the fact the claims are completely fallacious *and* sexist is irrelevant over the argument in general.

 

I still don't quite see where I was so obnoxiously fallacious, but I understand what you are saying. That said, I don't know that I appreciate the fact that my words are being scrutinized so extravagantly (while the content of my points seem to be lost) while the other (fallacious) posts of the argument here is getting the benefit of the doubt of being otherwise civil posts.

 

I'm sorry, but that's offensive.

 

~mooey

It is generally acknowledged the the general quality of the politics forum has gone to hell. It would basically be a full-time job to point out all the logical fallacies/general stupidity that gets thrown around here, so unless SFN wants to make me a moderator (which will never happen), I decline to make it my job.

Beyond that, I should think the selection of targets for scrutiny is a matter of taste. If you chose to target sexist fallacious posts, go ahead. Personally, I see nothing that makes sexist fallacious posts ipso facto more objectionable than simply fallacious posts. I do, however, see how targeting posts for special criticism just because they go against established values reinforces those values by circular reasoning (this argument leads to conclusions that go against societal values, therefore it gets more criticism, thereby the same values that we started with are perpetuated.) It strikes me that it is in the interest of honest debate that we not dog pile on one side of the debate while letting the other side off with relativity little criticism. The side that you oppose is quite clearly the underdog here, so forgive me if I don't jump on the dog pile. I will, however, continue to criticize your side of the argument, because no one else seems to be doing it, because untruth in the service of truth is still untruth, and because you should be held to a higher standard.

In addition, Marat's argument doesn't strike me as being clearly fallacious. The worst that could be said about it is that its specious Sophistry, but I'll leave that point for others to make.

Anyway, getting back to the substance of the thread:

When you respond to the rest of my last post, could you explain what this means:

It's not about sex. ABOUT sex, bob. It's about force. It's forced sex, which isn't strictly ABOUT sex, it's ABOUT force.

It strikes me as being either a platitude or a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

edit: you explained it while I was writing this, but rather unsatisfactorily .

Interesting. You're so disappointed in me, but the other posts in this thread that say directly and indirectly that rape victims basically "asked for it" -- that's not disappointing to you?

I hold you to a higher standard than [name removed] for reasons that I should think are obvious.

The fact my words angered you doesn't mean I committed a fallacy.

I never said that your words angered me. I'm not particularly angered by them, I'm just disappointed that someone who has, in the past, demonstrated a capability for clear, reasoned discourse has chosen to engage in emotional, illogical reasoning because of the subject matter. You've already admitted that you find it hard to be unbiased on this subject, why you can't see that your bias is clouding your judgment and effecting your reasoning is beyond me, perhaps its just the nature of bias.

I didn't say anything personal against anyone

Yes, you did. You said:

shows he doesn't understand what rape means.

You attempted to discredit someone's argument by making the (fairly ridiculous) claim that they don't know what the word "rape" means.

I stated that rape isn't sex.

Frankly, that's among the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. How can forced sex not be sex? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking

Rape is not about sexual desire.

 

It probably does have something to do with it. It's absolutely not the main cause of it. It's why I repeatedly posted (with emphasis) that rape, unlike sex, is an assault.

You've just defended yourself against the allegation that you've committed logical fallacies by committing a logical fallacy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your premise is that rape is assault, and your conclusion is that rapists are therefore motivated by causing harm to their victims.

Your conclusion simply does not follow from your premise, you've committed the non-sequiter fallacy. Robbery is also a crime that is defined as involving "force or the threat of force", this time it is to obtain money instead of sex. The fact that force is an inherent part of the crime does not prove or even come close to proving that the person was motivated by the desire to harm or overpower the victim. They could just want the money (or sex) and the harm/overpowering happens to be the only way they can obtain it.

Moving on to the study you cited, I'll admit I haven't read it yet, but its apparent you haven't read the one I cited yet either. I will say that based on the abstract alone, the methodology of this study seems flawed. How can interviewing victims of rape give you any incite into the rapists' motivations? Are victims of rape mind readers?

Suggesting victims deserve to be raped is infuriating.

Saying it's about sex is offensive

Obviously, I agree with you that victims didn't deserve to be raped. But saying that the opposite claim is "infuriating" or "offensive" doesn't prove anything about its validity, that's where the appeal to emotion comes in.

But the moment this is used as an excuse for aggressive violent assaults, it is no longer valid. The rape issue here is the key, not the sexual desire.

Bald assertion. Appeal to emotion.

It was established time and time again that rape has nothing to do with sexual desire.

No. It simply has not. No one has cited a single study that shows that "rape has nothing to do with sexual desire." I cited a study that showed that sexual desire was a motivator for rape, and was more significant motivator than the power and harm motivators that have been asserted here. If by "established" you mean that a bunch of people seem to agree on it, despite the data, you are committing an argumentum ad populum

Incidentally, the type that uses sex as a weapon. It's still not about the sex. It's violent assaults. Saying it's about sex is offensive and, quite honestly, shows he doesn't understand what rape means. Rape isn't sex. Rape is assault.

 

Should I emphasize this more?

No, you shouldn't. Its a blatant appeal to emotion, an ad hominem and a bald insertions.

You pointed out in a previous post that this was an emotional topic for you, but at this point, it strikes me that you're not even making a good faith effort to be rational or to understand what your opponents are trying to say. As I've said everyone acknowledges that rape is very bad, there's no need to abuse logic to make it seem worse. You really are above this, mooey.

While I do see what you're trying to do, you seem to fall into your own trap here. You criticize Green Xenon for making a false statement but your statement doesn't seem to be any better in being established. Do you have any research either way? Because (and I admit I *don't* know the research, hence I don't state a fact here but rather what I last remember reading) that the majority of acts of rape are not quite out of sexual desire, but rather acts of acquiring control. It's a physical "thrill" of controlling a woman, rather than "simply" the sexual desire behind it.

 

But I do believe it may be time to research through. I see what you're trying to do, and I think you have good points, but be careful criticizing others of saying "blatantly" false statements when you don't substantiate yours.

 

~mooey

You have a point there, mooey, so, I went back and looked at a bunch of studies on rape. There appears to be a significant divide in the literature. Studies based on empirical data reach one set of conclusions, and “studies” based on feminist theory and psychoanalytic theory reach a very different set of conclusions. The conclusions reached by the feminist/psychoanalytic papers are often directly contradicted by empirical studies.

Here, for example is a paper that

was directed toward testing a major component of the feminist explanation for rape: that such criminal behavior is most fundamentally the result of traditions of male domination in most sociopolitical and economic affairs.

And found

the belief that reducing average sex disparities in sociopolitical and economic terms will ameliorate a community's rape problem was not supported

By the data.

Ellis, Lee, and Charles Beattie. "The Feminist Explanation for Rape: An Empirical Test." Journal of Sex Research 19.1 (1983): 74-93. Print.

With respect to the debate between me and Green Xenon, as you may suspect, one of our sides is supported by empirical data-based research and one is supported by theory.

Indeed, feminist theory and psychoanalytic theory suggest that rapists are motivated by inflicting pain and by dominating their victims. I found references to several empirical studies and a meta-analysis that suggest this is wrong, but I could only access one of them through my university’s libraries’ website.

In this study, convicted rapists and a control group were shown pornographic scenes depicting various levels of consent, force and violence. Their levels of arousal were measured by penile plethysmograph. The study found that:

In contrast to previous findings, rapists showed an appropriate though comparatively moderate discrimination between rape and mutually-consenting episodes. They showed less arousal to rape episodes than to consenting episodes, with their weakest responses being to the most violent rape scene.

That is to say that rapists were most aroused by scenes showing consensual sex, less aroused by nonconsensual sex, and least aroused by violent, dominating, nonconsensual sex. This is the exact opposite of what would be predicted if rapists were motivated by domination or the infliction of pain.

Baxter, D.J, H. E. Barbaree, and W. L. Marshall. "Sexual Responses to Consenting and Forced Sex in a Large Sample of Rapists and Nonrapists." Behaviour Research and Therapy 24.527 Jan. (1986): 513-20. Print.

I guess it’s a question of weather you believe factual assertions should be based on data or not. Since this a science forum, the answer should be obvious.

I see that you have added more criticism of me to your post since I began crafting my response. (though “edited by…” doesn’t show up, perhaps because you’re staff.) I’ll come back to those later as these reponses take a while to research and write up.

That's a rather large exception, since any violent sexual assault would seem to imply a tinge of sadism.

You seem to be misinformed as to the definition of sadism. Sadism is when a person is aroused by the infliction of pain or humiliation. If a person is aroused by intercourse, and there is incidental pain, it doesn't make them a sadist. By the definition of sadism that appears to underlay your claim, any man who breaks a woman's hymen is a sadist.

I agree that rapists are awful people, but there's no need to make them seem worse than the truth.