Pentagon Extends Same-Sex Benefits
Feb 11, 2013 6:35pm Courtesy of Jeff Sheng A year and a half after the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell the Pentagon is extending many benefits to the same sex partners of military service members that until now had only been available to heterosexual couples. However, access to health care and some housing allowances available to spouses will remain unavailable because the Defense of Marriage Act defines
OLReporter: States Still Resisting National Sex Offender Law
Congress
passed the Adam Walsh Act six years ago in an attempt to set up a uniform
national registry to track known sex offenders who move from one state to
another.
Votes at 16 sounds good but are 16 year-olds really adults?
On the face of it 16 year-olds should have a vote. They pay income tax and National Insurance, can claim welfare benefits and tax credits, enter marriage or civil partnership, become a company director or even choose a career in the armed forces. So many things they can do. They can have sex without the fear of prosecution for having under-age sex. They can start a family with no stigma or legal issues attached. However does all this make them an adult that deserves the right to have a vote?
These people can’t buy alcohol or tobacco. So we deem 16 and 17 year-olds as old enough to get married and pay direct taxes but not old enough to police their own bodies? This doesn’t add up to me and it is why I often have real issues with topics such as these. When I was 16-17 I was old enough mentally to vote and I was certainly old enough to police my own body but I don’t think I was mentally capable about making decisions regarding sex. Heck I’m 29 now and still find it a huge issue (whether that is due to chronic lack of sexual education at my school is in part a reason for this I don’t know) but what defines you as an adult? It certainly shouldn’t be your age.
Of course we have to have a legally defined age for these things because otherwise it would be a free for all. However not all 16 year-olds are the same mentally and they certainly are not informed the same. Same with 17 year-olds. Heck the same with 29 year-olds. Pick any age you want and you’ll find people of different maturity levels.
When the tobacco law got changed from 16 to 18 it meant that a group of people who were deemed old enough and responsible enough to decide how to police their own bodies with regards to tobacco were suddenly not any more. Had these people changed overnight? No they hadn’t but yet most people seem to agree that putting tobacco up to the same age limit as alcohol was the right thing to do.
I really struggle with telling people that they are old enough to have their say and be heard at the voting booth but on the other hand tell them that they are not old enough to enjoy other adult pursuits. Having different legal ages defining being an adult just doesn’t make any sense.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the UK government in 1991, states that a child ‘means every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.’ All four nations of the United Kingdom state that a child is anyone under the age of 18 but look at some of the strange add ons to this. Sex is fine if you are 16 or above but any photos or videos of consensual sexual activity of 16 or 176 year-olds is illegal. So have sex boys and girls – you are responsible enough to know what you are doing but taking photographs or videoing it is too much responsibility and isn’t allowed. Now I know why this is and I’m not going to argue against it but does it really make sense that the act is fine but having evidence of the act is not?
Also the age of criminal responsibility is 10 in three of the UK nations (it is 12 in Scotland) so you are old enough at 10 to know right from wrong in one country but if you live in another then you magically don’t know the difference until you are 12? Again this doesn’t add up. For example in Denmark until a couple of years ago the age of criminal responsibility was 15 (lowed to 14 in 2010) but in the USA it ranges from 6-12 depending on what state you live in. Yes a six year-old can be charged as an adult in North Carolina. Argentina has the highest threshold at 16 before any charges can be brought but 18 is the age where they can be charged as an adult.
So across the world different governments define being an adult as many different things. Are the kids in North Carolina really ten years more advanced than those in Argentina? No of course they are not. It just goes to show how difficult this subject is.
I back votes at 16 as a principle but I would like an age set (preferably 16, 17 or 18) where you are defined as an adult for everything. There should not be a case where 16 and 17 year-olds can do some adult stuff legally but not others. I can’t see how a person can be old enough to get married, have kids, join the armed forces, vote but yet we say they aren’t old enough to go buy a pint in a pub or buy a packet of cigarettes. If you are old enough for the former then surely you are old enough for the latter?
This isn’t an ideal world and as I said I was mature and educated enough to have a vote at 16 but I wasn’t in a position where I think I was mature enough to know whether I was ready to have sex or not. Yet I was legally allowed to do the thing I wasn’t ready for but wasn’t legally allowed to do the thing that I was more than ready.
This is a very hard one but surely when you are an adult you are an adult. You can’t be a bit of an adult. Some age limit has to be set but surely the best way for this is to be uniform across all government departments instead of having a situation where you are adult enough for one thing but not another. The move from being a child to an adult is different enough without throwing in all the different stages of being an adult as the law currently defines.
So votes at 16. Yes. However for votes at 16 then other things have to be at 16 too.
Man gets 99 years for sex assault of Texas girl
Jurors on Thursday convicted a man of taking part in the repeated sexual assaulting a Texas middle school student and sentenced him to 99 years in prison. Eric McGowen wasn’t in court when jurors found him guilty of aggravated sexual assault of a child or later when they returned with the sentence, which also included a $10,000 fine. The 20-year-old had been free on bail and he skipped out during a break in proceedings Wednesday, the first day of testimony. The judge issued an arrest warrant for McGowen Wednesday and allowed testimony to resume Thursday. Jurors returned with the guilty verdict after deliberating for about 20 minutes. Then, after brief court proceedings on his punishment, they decided his sentence in less than 30 minutes. Prosecutors say the girl, who was 11 years old at the time, was sexually assaulted on at least five occasions from mid-September through early December of 2010 by 20 men and boys from her town, Cleveland, which is about 45 miles northeast of Houston. Police began investigating after one of the girl’s classmates told a teacher he saw video of her being sexually assaulted in an abandoned trailer. All six of the juveniles and two of the 14 adults charged in the case pleaded guilty. McGowen was the first defendant to stand trial. He faced a minimum sentence of 25 years prison and a maximum of life. After prosecutors concluded their case Thursday following the testimony of nearly a dozen witnesses over a day and a half, defense attorney Matthew Poston rested his case without presenting any witnesses or evidence. McGowen was in court Wednesday when the girl, now 13, spoke about her ordeal. The girl was not in court Thursday. Testifying using a pseudonym, she told jurors about an encounter in October 2010 and one the following month in which she said McGowen and several other men and boys took turns sexually assaulting her while recording the encounters on video. The girl briefly broke down in tears as jurors were shown a few minutes of video of the alleged sexual assault in October 2010. She described another encounter that November that started in a different Cleveland home and continued at a nearby abandoned trailer. She told jurors that McGowen assaulted her with a beer bottle during that incident. Like McGowen, most of the remaining 11 defendants in the case face charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child. Four face a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child. The two men who pleaded guilty and one of the juveniles, who has since turned 18, also testified against McGowen. The two men are serving 15-year prison terms while the juveniles in the case each received suspended seven-year prison terms. The case sparked outrage in Cleveland, and early on, some residents suggested the girl was partly responsible because they say she wore makeup, looked older than her age and wasn’t properly supervised by her parents, drawing widespread condemnation. The case also has been complicated by a belief among many in the predominantly black neighborhood where several of the suspects live that the arrests were racially motivated. All of the suspects are black, while the girl is Hispanic.
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Man gets 99 years for sex assault of Texas girl
Army recruiter will face the penalties of a sex crime | Orlando Sex …
As Florida residents know, any type of person–a doctor, teacher or lawyer–can be convicted of criminal charges. In recent news, an Army recruiter is now registered as a sex offender. The 34 year-old man, who was facing criminal charges1 for contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor, has now been convicted.
According to reports, the incident involved a 17-year-old girl who entered an Army recruiting office at a local mall to try to find a prom date. According to police reports, the girl left the recruiting office to get her nails done, but went back shortly after 5 p.m. When she returned the recruiter was the only one there.
Sources say that the girl reports that she consented to sex relations in the office and did not want to see the army recruiter charged.
This particular Army recruiter was a married father of two and a combat veteran who served for 10 years. He had tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is now expected to receive a less-than-honorable discharge and lose many military benefits.
The Army recruiter has been ordered to serve two years of probation. He avoided jail time, but he will be required to register as a sex offender. While the charge is only a misdemeanor, if he fails to register as a sex offender, he can be charged and convicted of a new crime that could be as serious as a Class C felony.
Specifically, sex offenders must register within 10 days of their release from prison. A person who is required to register as a sex offender must also report where they are working or are attending higher education. They must report if they move to a new address and must submit to having fingerprints and photographs taken for the purpose of identification.
In the end, one loses many rights when convicted of a sex crime. This has probably been the case for the Army recruiter. For this reason, it is important to retain solid legal assistance when addressing such a case.
Source: The Register-Guard, “Recruiter guilty of sex crime2,” Jack Moran, July 31, 2012
References
- ^ criminal charges (www.bigneylaw.com)
- ^ Recruiter guilty of sex crime (www.registerguard.com)
House introduces bill to protect married gay and lesbian service …
By Adam Polaski1
Jun 28, 2012 at 09:00 am
This afternoon, U.S. Representative Adam Smith, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and represents Washington’s 9th District, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would explicitly clarify the definition of “spouse” to include same-sex couples. The bill, the
Sex Toy Inventors | Latest Headlines
In 1997 I was part of a group of people who opened a worker co-op sex shop in Toronto, Canada called Come As You Are. I left the co-op a few years back, but they are celebrating their 15th anniversary that got me thinking about the first weeks and months the store was open.
One thing that I thought was funny was that the first few days we were open we had several people come in to say they had an idea for a new sex toy, or some kind of sex toy invention that they were looking for help bringing to market.
I thought this was funny and a little ironic because, at the time, we could barely afford to pay our rent, and most of these entrepreneurs didn’t bother to support us by actually buying something. And at the same time, the fact that they were coming in says something about where we were at in our public conversations about devices for sexual pleasure.
I don’t work in stores anymore (which I miss) but I still get these questions. Usually about one a month. Which prompted me to write this article up offering some suggestions about what to do when you’ve got a great idea for a sex toy, but no idea what to do with it.
Read More: Inventing Sex Toys
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US Navy Renewable Ocean Energy Conference to be Held at …
07:35 GMT, March 9, 2012 PORT HUENEME, CALIF | The Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Engineering Service Center (ESC) and NAVFAC Pacific will host the Renewable Ocean Energy Conference on two …
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US Navy Renewable Ocean Energy Conference to be Held at …