[extropy-chat] Your children are safe with us...

[ben]

"Robert Bradbury" <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> MIAMI, April 4 (AP) ? The deputy press secretary for the Department 
> of Homeland Security was arrested on Tuesday and accused of using the
> Internet to seduce someone he thought was a teenage girl, the
> authorities said.

This has got me confused.

It seems to be saying that if someone does something which is NOT
illegal, in the belief that it IS illegal, they can be prosecuted??

This guy tried to seduce someone (over the age of consent) over the
internet. Which isn't illegal, last i heard. He THOUGHT the 'someone'
was underage, so despite the fact that they weren't, he was doing wrong?
So does that mean that if someone shot a tree in the mistaken belief
that it was a person, they could be prosecuted for murder? Or would it
be attempted murder? So what was this guy arrested for, 'attempted
paedophilia'?

When did your beliefs become a target for the law, rather than your actions?

If anything, i'd have thought it was the 'someone' pretending to be
underage that was doing something wrong.

I'm not trying to condone paedophilia or anything, i'm just wondering
how anyone can commit a crime by failing to commit that very crime?

Are we in a society where you can be prosecuted for what you think?
(yeah, i know about Austria's law against 'holocaust-denial', but i
think they can be excused that specific insanity, at least for a while).

(btw, the report just said 'teenage girl', not underage girl, which also
struck me as strange. Is the age of consent in the US absurdly high, or
something, so that all teenagers are under it? - surely not!)

ben