Will We Ever Stop Fighting Over God, Sex, and Kids?
By Michael J. Talmo
11-8-2022
We humans have a need to feel morally superior. We judge others. We condemn others. We just love to have something to hate. We revel in hate. We wallow in hate. Religions warn us about this trait. In the Bible, Jesus tells an angry mob who wants to stone a woman to death for committing adultery “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Nevertheless, we just can’t resist picking up those stones and throwing them at others.
Words like immoral, indecent, obscene, disgusting, perverted, etc. are labels that we attach to things we don’t like. They mean different things to different people at different times. They are intangibles. They are illusions. They reflect what we fear and loathe in ourselves. They are not crimes like murder and theft, which are tangible acts.
Governments use and exploit these moral intangibles to deprive us of our rights. They do this by setting legal precedents that roll back civil liberties, which gives them, along with the billionaires that control them, more power. For example, in my country, the US, we are being offered a choice between two great evils: medical fascism, mainly from the Democratic Party, and religious fascism, mainly from the Republican Party. God is the graven image of the Republicans and science is the graven image of the Democrats. I use the term graven image because neither God nor science has anything to do with either of them. Both major parties are a horror show and are part of the same globalist fascist system.
Most people make superficial judgments. They don’t study an issue—they just go along with the party, religion, nation, or group that they identify with. They pay attention to what they are manipulated into paying attention to. They hate who they are told to hate and love who they are told to love. Any atrocity is okay as long as their tribe is doing it.
God and morals
Does God exist? I don’t know. No one knows. There are some who claim to know. They speak with passion, conviction, even arrogance. But all they are demonstrating is that they don’t know that they don’t know. Many people can’t tell the difference between a fact and a belief. They are a shining example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, “a type of cognitive bias in which people believe they are smarter and more capable than they are” and “…do not possess the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence.” In other words, some people are too dumb to realize how dumb they really are.
The existence of God is really a question of probability. Based on what we know about the world and the universe, I would say that the probability is very low. But if there is a God, this deity would likely be as George Burns (1896-1996), portrayed Him in the 1977 movie Oh, God! Burns’ character explains that He’s God “only for the big picture.” Whatever happens to us happens. We can choose to love each other or kill each other. If there was an interventionist God, then He/She/It would be giving us the same teachings throughout human history. The thousands of different religions that have come and gone would never have existed, as Dr. Richard Carrier demonstrated in this 2017 lecture.
There also are people who claim to have seen Jesus, angels, and various saints in visions, dreams, and near-death experiences. But pagans in the Ancient World and people in other religions around the world today make the same claims about their deities. This alone proves that nothing supernatural is going on. I personally hold the view of Thomas Paine (1737-1809) who said that if a person or a small group of persons claim to have had a religious revelation,“others are not obliged to accept it.”
Obviously, a percentage of people who claim to have visions of the supernatural are liars and con artists. But many probably have schizotypal personality disorder. There are 10 types of personality disorders. They fall into clusters A, B & C categories. Schizotypal is one of the Cluster A personality disorders. People with this disorder can regularly hallucinate. But unlike schizophrenia, they are usually in contact with reality and can live mostly normal lives. But no messiahs, saints, or mediums ever demonstrated any knowledge or insight beyond the time and culture that they lived in. No miracles attributed to them were ever proven to be real. To quote Dr. Richard Carrier, “We don’t live in a Harry Potter Universe.”
So, if there is no God, or at least one not involved in our lives, where do morals come from? We make them up. But Rabbi Kabibble or Friar Fafandoch telling us how to live wouldn’t be very impressive, so we make up religions to provide authority for the teachings. It doesn’t take a genius to make up morals. Self-awareness, too many times lack of self-awareness, and circumstances determine them. And everybody thinks their morals are the right morals without considering that maybe they’re not.
Sometimes I will accidentally encounter TV evangelists while channel surfing and watch them for a few minutes. There’s a whole slew of them and they are always fund-raising. I honestly can’t fathom why anyone would send these sleazy characters money. I can almost smell the sulfur coming through the TV set. But millions of viewers do send them money—lots of money. But ignorance and gullibility might not be the only reasons.
Magician and atheist Derren Brown demonstrated how even fellow atheists can be manipulated into believing in God using hypnotic suggestion, psychology, and a religious environment in this 2005 video. Even more impressive is this 2012 video where he takes an atheist who is also a scientist, gets her to break down in tears and apologize to God for not believing in Him. Brown then deconverted everyone by telling them what he did. And according to my research, Brown didn’t use actors. Nothing was staged.
Since Judeo-Christian beliefs thoroughly permeate Western culture, even people who were raised in non-religious households have had belief in God as well as the anti-sexual attitudes and prejudices of these religions deeply embedded in their subconscious. Maybe that’s why Brown was able to convert the atheists used in his experiment. But if we value our freedom as well as our sanity, we must learn to recognize and reject religious bigotry—especially when it dons the trappings of public safety.
Pornography and censorship
Porn is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry. Exactly how many billions no one knows. Estimates vary from 6 billion to as much as 97 billion per year worldwide. But more “realistic estimates” put it around 15 billion a year according to this 2018 article. But even 97 billion is chump change compared to the 1.27 trillion that the global pharmaceutical industry made in 2020 alone. And their products kill people. Around 200,000 people per year are killed by prescription drugs in the US alone. A 2017 study in The Lancet reports that industrial air, water, and soil pollution kills over 9 million people a year worldwide. Pornographic websites, magazines, and videos don’t kill anyone.
Our puritanical anti-sexual culture can’t accept what I just said, so it continues to demonize the porn industry. For example, this 2018 article in the New York Post reported that “porn stars are dying at an alarming rate.” Turns out they only listed a few people whose deaths resulted from choices in their personal lives like drug use and suicide. But many famous movie stars have also died from drug use and suicide over the years. Unsavory, ruthless, psychopathic characters, and people who can’t cope exist in all industries. This applies to Hollywood, Wall Street, and Main Street. So, all of this ranting and raving about the evils and profits of the porn industry doesn’t amount to a hill of tiddlywinks.
Under U.S. law, pornography is not illegal. Since 1957, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has ruled that pornography, meaning depictions of nudity and explicit sexual acts, are fully protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which declares that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech or of the press…” But authoritarian personalities have always looked for ways to get around this great and vital to our freedom amendment by claiming that it’s not absolute. Exceptions can and must be made. In the case of pornography, SCOUTS has ruled that something can be banned only if declared obscene or if it’s considered child pornography.
A 2018 Gallup Poll found that 43 percent of Americans find porn “morally acceptable.” In 2020, Human Rights Watch reported that “52 percent of Americans and two-thirds of voters 18-44 years support decriminalizing sex work.” So, to justify irrational sex laws, governments, religious and feminist groups use kiddie porn and sex trafficking to spread fear and hate. The overwhelming majority of hookers aren’t victims of sex trafficking, as reported in Reason Magazine. A 2018 study on child pornography reported that “Prior to the Internet, images were traded furtively in hard-copy form among relatively small groups of dedicated users.” Kiddie porn, which also included some magazines and films, has always been a tiny genre now made to look bigger by adding teenagers as old as 16 and 17 to the definition. Teenagers aren’t children.
The basis for censoring porn is that it causes sex crimes and every social ill imaginable. None of this rhetoric has any basis in fact. Sure, some so-called experts promote this nonsense. But even experts can be biased because they too were raised in a sexually repressed culture. The only way to eliminate bias and see what’s really going on is by looking at overall crime statistics instead of observations and claims regarding individual cases. A 2016 article in Psychology Today explained:
“if porn actually contributes to rape, then starting around 1999, as the internet made it much more easily available, the rate of sexual assault should have increased. So what happened? According to the Justice Department’s authoritative National Crime Victimization Survey, since 1995, the U.S. sexual assault rate has fallen 44 percent.”
The article further reported that from 1948-1989 porn was illegal and unavailable in Czechoslovakia. This included tame stuff like Playboy Magazine. But when Communism collapsed, the democratic Czech Republic legalized porn and it became widely available. Comparing rape rates 17 years prior to legalization with rates 18 years after legalization found that rapes decreased significantly. Even more significant was that child sexual abuse dropped from 2,000 arrests per year to less than 1,000 a year.
A 2010 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found “that this country, like Denmark and Japan, had a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and, like those other countries, showed a significant decrease in the incidence of child sex abuse…Consuming child pornography alone is not a risk factor for committing hands-on sex offenses.”
Even in the 1960s and early 1970s, studies showed that pornography was harmless. This is why SCOTUS ruled in Miller v. California (1973), the precedent for today’s obscenity laws, that state and federal lawmakers don’t have to prove that sexual materials cause sex crimes. Governments can merely assume that such materials are harmful. If there was any proof, the Court wouldn’t have made that ruling. What this precedent means is that any narrow-minded bigoted fool can pass any laws they want. I call that a very bad and very dangerous legal precedent, which extends to other areas like public health. No proof was required for COVID-19 restrictions like forcing people to wear masks.
In New York v. Ferber (1982) SCOTUS ruled that child pornography is not protected by the First Amendment and that it can be banned even if what’s depicted isn’t obscene. In Osborne v. Ohio (1990) SCOTUS further ruled that mere possession of child pornography in one’s own home was also illegal.
A 2012 article in Philly Mag and a 2017 article in Reason Magazine explained that under federal law 18 USC 1466A, child pornography is defined as any visual representation of a child (under 18), an adult who looks like a child nude, engaging in sexual acts, or provocatively posed. This also applies to drawings, paintings, cartoons, sculptures, and computer-generated images that look like real kids. Merely “suggesting you have illegal child pornography (even if you don’t) can carry a mandatory minimum prison sentence.”
Examples: a 33 year-old Idaho school teacher went to prison for possessing pictures of the Simpsons cartoon children (Bart, Lisa, and Maggie) having sex; a 17 year-old was charged with a felony for sending nude pictures of himself to his 17 year-old girlfriend; parents have gotten arrested and had their children taken from them for taking innocent nude photos of their kids during bath time like this Arizona couple. And here’s a really dumb one: in 2008, a California reporter got hit with “felony obscenity charges for videotaping a practicing squad of fully clothed high school cheerleaders and, apparently, focusing a little too much attention on their asses.”
The rationale behind child porn laws is that punishing consumers reduces demand, which doesn’t hold water, since a lot of porn on the internet can be viewed for free. But the main reason is that child porn is a permanent record of a child’s abuse, which damages their reputation and well-being. Courts have ruled and federal law states that “children are revictimized every time images of their sexual abuse are transferred or viewed. It’s a violation of the privacy of the victim and a repetition of their abuse.” Such arguments are mind-bogglingly stupid beyond belief. They are equivalent to believing in voodoo dolls and black magic.
Think about it folks. If a person viewing sexual images of children is guilty of child abuse, then so is looking at a video of 12 year-old Tamir Rice being murdered by a cop and this video of a 16 year-old boy being beaten by cops and security guards. ABC News reported that cops killed more than 100 children between 2015 and 2021. Honestly folks, who is a greater danger to your children: the cops or some guy sitting in his house whacking off to a picture of a kid? And keep in mind that the FBI distributes child pornography to entrap people. Aren’t the agents who do this also guilty of child abuse?
It’s also important to understand that people convicted of child pornography can get longer prison sentences than someone who molests or rapes an actual child. One guy got 200 years in prison for possessing 20 images because Arizona law imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years per image.“Child Pornography has become a thought crime. Quite simply, we do not like the way people think about certain pictures of children” (2001 University of Pennsylvania study page 995).
Another problem are sex offender registries, which are cruel, inhuman, and unjust. Named after murdered children, the Jacob Wetterling Act of 1994, Megan’s Law of 1996, and the Adam Walsh Act of 2006, are part of this horrible system that, along with draconian child pornography laws, has spread to many other countries. In my opinion, mainly due to pressure from the US, as explained in this 2019 article. One thing is certain, if they name a sex law after a kid, count on it being unjust. Such laws are based on revenge and they don’t work as explained here and here.
Bottom line: censorship laws wind up harming innocent people instead of punishing real criminals. Simple logic folks, to accuse someone of any kind of child abuse you need an actual child. If there is no child, there is no abuse. Thus, pictures, videos, cartoons, etc. aren’t child abuse even if actual children are depicted. And people who view them aren’t committing child abuse. Once any act, no matter how heinous, no matter how repugnant, is recorded on film or depicted in a photo, it becomes an idea and is protected under the First Amendment. Ideas, fantasies, and desires aren’t crimes. They harm no one.
To be clear, I don’t condone sexually abusing children. Anyone who uses children sexually in photos or films belongs in jail. But this doesn’t apply to places that sell porn or to consumers who obtain it any more than it applies to obtaining clothing or other goods manufactured in the many sweatshops throughout the world that physically and sexually abuse women and children, as documented here and here. Virtual kiddie porn makes using real children unnecessary anyway. As for existing images of real children, any who are now adults should have the right to go to court and have their images removed from commercial distribution provided they can prove it’s their image. But that’s as far as it ought to go.
What we now call pornography has always been part of human sexuality. The good old days of purity and innocence that uptight prudes constantly lament never existed. I’ve seen explicit erotic photos that date back to the 1850s. I’ve seen hardcore porn films that date back to the early 1900s. I’ve seen erotic comic books from the 1930s and 40s known as Tijuana Bibles, where you can see famous characters like Popeye getting it on with Olive Oyl. And erotica goes back way further than modern times. Erotic sculptures and paintings on cave walls date back to the Stone Age. Der Spiegel reported that “An increasing number of finds seem to indicate the Stone Age was an orgy of sexual imagination.” Shades of Hanna-Barbera, Fred and Wilma Flintstone were kinky.
And never forget that the First Amendment wasn’t written to only protect popular ideas and beliefs, but also to protect ideas and beliefs that are hated and vilified. It must apply to all forms of expression or it means nothing.
Snowflake feminism
The dictionary defines feminism as “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” I fully support that kind of feminism. But sometimes factions of women’s movements have gone on disastrous moral crusades that wound up doing a lot of harm. The worst was the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union), which helped make booze in the US illegal from 1920-1933. This noble cause was called “Prohibition” and it wound up being an abysmal failure.
Another oppressive organization was WAP (Women Against Pornography), which was a right-wing pro-censorship group masquerading as a feminist group that existed from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Like Carrie Nation (1846-1911), a prominent WCTU member who smashed up saloons with a hatchet, WAP, with its sister organizations, picketed and conducted shame tours of adult emporiums.
These crusading extremists really aren’t feminists—they are misandrists, as explained in this 2018 article. I prefer to call them snowflake feminists because they do support some legitimate women’s issues. But overall, they are easily offended nitpickers who want women to have superior rights. Their agenda is to demonize men and railroad them into jail by overly defining rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment so that they can mean just about anything. Drunken sex, a regretted sexual encounter, a joke, a compliment, asking for a date, even looking at a woman too long are now fair game to get men fired from their jobs and criminally prosecuted. Like the Victims Rights Movement, these fanatics ignore the fact that one of our foremost and basic legal principles is that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
The newest manifestation of snowflake feminism is MeToo, in my opinion, an anti-sex crusade in the guise of a women’s empowerment movement. It was founded in 2006 by Tarana Burke to support survivors of sexual violence. But in 2017, the #MeToo hashtag turned into a global movement when actress Alyssa Milano posted on Twitter “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” NBC News reported that “Within 24 hours, her post generated thousands of replies” and ultimately millions “from around the world sharing personal stories.”
Sharing stories and venting one’s feelings on social media I have no problem with. What I have a problem with is the plethora of bad laws and policies that have resulted. But has anyone bothered to ask if the millions of stories that were shared on the #MeToo hashtag are true? Many probably are, but most probably aren’t. A 2018 article in Psychology Today reported that “Social media sites can be breeding grounds for dishonesty…what people post on social media is not an accurate representation of their lives or who they are. In fact, it may be blatant lies…it is critical to remind yourself that what you see is not an accurate picture of reality.”
Here are some accurate pictures of reality: Westchester Magazine: A manger got hit with a sexual harassment charge because he kissed a subordinate at her wedding, not where they worked. After the ceremony, everyone lined up, shook the grooms hand, and kissed the bride on the cheek; a six-year-old boy in Massachusetts was suspended for sexual harassment for “placing two fingers under a classmate’s waistband after she touched him.” No criminal charges were filed because they don’t apply to kids under seven in that state; a municipal worker in Tennessee submitted a sexual harassment claim because she was terribly upset by a painting that the city hung in a public vestibule that partly showed a woman’s breasts.
Numerous companies prohibit office romances and even romances with customers. Many schools have banned hugging or limited hugs to no more than three seconds. It gets even crazier in the public arena. In 2018, France banned catcalling (whistling) at a woman. In the UK in 2014, commuter Mark Pearson was charged with sexually penetrating a famous actress with his fingers and hitting her on the shoulder while quickly walking past her in a crowded train station clutching the strap of his shoulder bag with one hand and holding a newspaper in the other. A jury found him not guilty because there was no way he could have done it.
Even presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have been subjected to this hysterical nonsense. I have no sympathy for either one of them because of all the damage they did to our economy and to our freedom via the COVID-19 scamdemic. They are beyond any doubt the two worst presidents in US history. If they ever make a movie about the horror and destruction caused by these two nincompoops, I have the perfect title for it: Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber. But labeling them rapists or pedophiles is beyond absurd.
In Biden’s case, Business Insider reported that in 2019, eight women accused him of inappropriate touching, invading their space, and making them feel uncomfortable. But seven of the women said this “did not amount to sexual harassment or assault.” Only one woman who worked for him years earlier as an aide, accused him of shoving her up against a wall and digitally penetrating her with his fingers. This supposedly happened in 1993, but she never mentioned it until 2020, an election year. Her stories were contradictory and she lacked credibility. The pedophilia charge is totally bogus. Politifact reported that pictures of Biden with kids posted on social media lack context, have been “deceptively edited” and in some cases aren’t him.
As for Trump, at least 25 women have accused him of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment since the 1970s. One woman, columnist E. Jean Carroll, waited until 2019 to accuse Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in 1995. Or was it 1996? NBC News reported that Elle Magazine fired her as a result. She wrote about the alleged rape in her book “What Do We Need Men For?” Surprise! And why would Trump pick a public place where he could have been caught?
The other accuser was an anonymous woman who waited until 2016 to file two lawsuits that Trump raped her at an orgy hosted by Jeffrey Epstein (1953-2019) in 1994, when she was 13 years-old. The first lawsuit was dismissed and the second voluntarily dropped. Another false claim debunked by Snopes was that Trump paid up to $35 million to silence accusations that he raped children ages 10-13. A 2016 video of Trump kissing a little girl at a rally was also used to accuse him of pedophilia.
Snowflake feminists claim that we live in a “rape culture.” According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), “One in five U.S. Women has been raped”, which Time Magazine explained “are misleading” because, for one thing, instances of forced sex that respondents didn’t regard as crimes were included in order to inflate “reports of sexual and domestic violence.” In 2015, the Washington Post reported on a huge college campus survey conducted by the AAU (Association of American Universities), which was “deliberately designed to exaggerate the number of sexual assaults on campus.” For example, like the CDC, AAU counted any forced kissing, unwanted touching and other sexual acts as assault or harassment even if the students didn’t consider them crimes.
This misleading propaganda has led to the whacky concept of “affirmative consent.” Meaning, as explained here and here, for sex to take place, consent must be unambiguous, conscious, and voluntary. And it must be obtained every step of the way: touching, kissing, foreplay, etc. And consent can be withdrawn at anytime—even before the guy withdraws during intercourse. Do I really need to say the words? This is stupid. Who pray tell has sex like this? Who would want to have sex like this? So far, this nonsense, except for Colorado which went completely insane, applies to college campuses.
In the twilight zone of snowflake feminism, yes means yes, unless she changes her mind, and no always means no. If you try to convince a woman or push the matter any further, you’re a rapist. And if she’s drunk or high, you’re also a rapist. But outside the twilight zone, no doesn’t always mean no. It can mean “convince me” or “I’m not sure”, as Camille Paglia, who I consider a real feminist, explains in this video. And in this comedy video, Dave Chappelle demonstrates how absurd all of this really is.
Affirmative consent advocates overlook the fact that sexual activity doesn’t fit into neat little yes and no boxes. Both partners aren’t always equally in the mood or even sure if they want to. Some prefer to just do it rather than talk about it and ask for directions. And some women like rough sex, and want to be taken. In fact, documented research over the past 40 years shows that 31% – 57% of women have rape fantasies. Of course, this almost never means they actually want to be raped.
In her book, Swept Away, Dr Carol Cassell explains that men are socially conditioned to demand sex, while women are conditioned to withhold sex lest they be labeled “bad girls.” This prevents them from engaging in sex freely as men do. So, they have to justify their sexual activity by claiming they’re in love, or they were drunk, or by claiming they were too scared to refuse. This absolves them of taking responsibility for their actions and makes their “No” sound like a maybe. It also encourages men to lie in order to get sex. It’s an unhealthy vicious circle that now allows guilt over a past sexual encounter to be reinterpreted as rape.
Militant feminists want modern women to see themselves as helpless victims whose sensibilities are so fragile that in colleges they need safe spaces and trigger warnings on books to protect them from offensive ideas, as explained here and here. And since just about every woman on the planet has experienced a pick-up attempt, been touched, pursued, propositioned, complimented on her looks, and exposed to crass humor, defining these things as rape, assault, and harassment creates the illusion that sex crimes permeate every nook and cranny of modern civilization.
Another aspect of inflated rape statistics is false accusations. Snowflake feminists insist they are extremely rare, as in 2%, which anti-porn zealot, Susan Brownmiller, cited in her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. It supposedly comes from a 1974 speech by a judge who said he got it from the Commander of New York City’s Rape Analysis Squad. There is no evidence to support his claim. The BBC cites a 2010 study that says 2% – 10% of rape accusations are false. The U.S. Department of Justice cited a nine-year study (1978-1987) in the Midwest. It found that 41% of rape accusations were false.
In reality, there is no way to know what percentage of rape claims are false. The Centre For Male Psychology reported that false allegation rates, taken from 19 sources, can be “anywhere between 1.5% and 90%.” One reason is because “the term ‘rate of false rape allegations’ is highly ambiguous; it has no agreed definition.” But even taking false rape charges at the low end consider this: in the US, 144,300 rape cases in 2021 were reported. That’s between over 2,800 (2%) and over 14,000 (10%) false accusations in a single year.
Why would women lie about rape? Money, revenge, for sympathy, to get attention, a disturbed mental state, regret, an alibi to hide infidelity, or other misdeeds. But studies, like the ones here, here, and here show that a percentage of false accusers don’t know they are false accusers. Psychotherapists using hypnosis, “guided imagination exercises”, fake photographs, and leading questions, as well as media coverage, and even the passage of time can create false memories. For example, a percentage of women watching all the media hoopla about rape and sexual harassment being rampant, might have thought about past events and started imagining or interpreting them in a different way. In the case of celebrities, some accusers, by no means all, might not have ever met them.
This is why laws that have little or no statute of limitations for sex crimes must be repealed. Unless the alleged victim is in a coma, the time limit should be 3-6 months. The only offenses that shouldn’t have a statute of limitations are murder and war crimes. And this is why no company, institution, or industry should be allowed to fire or carry out any kind of sanctions against anyone based on allegations or charges that have been made against them.
Nevertheless, as reported in Forbes Magazine, fanatical feminists continue to insist that women must be believed at all costs and that innocent men have nothing to fear. They say that men need to “check their male privilege” and that if some men are victimized by “false allegations”, it’s “a price they are willing to pay in favor of the movement.” But as explained in this 2008 article, men have every reason to be afraid. Due to rape shield laws, “there is no longer any requirement that a person accusing another of rape have any evidence other than just her word. The old expression ‘it’s just her word against mine’, simply doesn’t work anymore.”
In today’s political climate, state and federal prosecutors are allowed to use all sorts of dirty tactics to get convictions, such as bringing in “prior bad acts witnesses”, people who claim the accused assaulted them as well, but aren’t part of the case being prosecuted. They can also bring in so-called experts on sexual assault, psychotherapists who make a nice living providing their expert testimony even though they never met or treated the so-called victims. These tactics bolster weak cases that never should have been prosecuted in the first place. They distract jurors from the lack of evidence and manipulate them into ignoring evidence that shows the accused is innocent.
This is what happened to Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. “Prior bad acts witnesses” and expert testimony was used to convict them because the prosecution didn’t have a case. Cosby’s accuser admitted in court that she maintained friendly contact with him after he supposedly raped her, as explained here. And Weinstein had numerous emails showing that he had an ongoing consensual sexual relationship with one of his accusers and had sex at least once with his other accuser after he supposedly assaulted and raped them. Both cases against Weinstein were also tried together when they should have been tried separately. And since both Cosby and Weinstein, two physically ugly dudes in my opinion, are rich and famous, lots of women were willing to have sex with them. It’s highly improbable that they would have to rape anyone.
Unfair trials will up conviction rates, which is their purpose as explained by activist Diana Davison in this video on Bill Cosby’s first trial. A lot of guilty men will go to jail who would otherwise have gone free. This can sound like a good thing. After all, 127 women accused Weinstein and 60 women accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, so it sounds like they’re guilty when you add all the stories up—even if they don’t sound credible individually. This is a classic example of the bandwagon fallacy: they’re all saying it so it must be true. And let’s not forget that many of Weinstein’s accusers have collected millions in civil lawsuits, as reported here and here. But the most important thing to remember is that unfair trials will also convict and ruin the lives of innocent men. We must not allow this. As Judge William Blackstone (1723-1780) famously stated: “the law holds that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than 1 innocent suffer.”
Closing thoughts
If you take away nothing else from this article, understand this: either the law protects all of us or it protects none of us. Sin, indecency, immorality, or what God supposedly commands don’t belong in our statute books—they belong in our hearts. They are matters of conscience, not criminal law. Saying no to ridiculous and unjust sex laws isn’t about normalizing pedophilia or condoning the existence of child pornography, rape, or sexism. So, go ahead and rail against what you consider immoral and indecent. Condemn it. denounce it as sin all you want. But recognize that passing oppressive laws is not the answer and puts all of us in danger from something far worse: an out-of-control criminal government.
Under our current legal precedent system, anyone can crawl out of the woodwork, or should I say out from under a rock, and accuse anyone of child molestation, rape, or some other sexual misdeed, even if it happened decades ago. Anyone can be victimized by these cruel and barbaric laws. It can happen to your friends, your children, your parents, or to other family members. It could even happen to you.
