If a person is coerced into sex that, by definition, is not voluntary and thus rape.
You keep drawing new scenarios, but they are never analogous to the one previous! Having sex is not a crime, so to consent to sex while under coercion is not criminal. Killing someone is a crime, so to consent to murder while under coercion is a crime.
No one has ever said that the coercers are immune from retaliation. Why do you keep insisting that?
If you coerce someone into having sex, you are a rapist. If you coerce someone into murdering, you are a murder.
Coercing someone into carrying out a murder is the same crime as hiring someone to carry out a murder*. Committing a murder while under coercion is the same crime as being a murderer for hire.
Jon, my point is as following: why would you not stigmatize a women who was forced by a chainsaw-to-the-neck into sex, but you would punish someone who was forced at chainsaw-point into killone someone else? I realize that sex isn’t a crime, but that’s not the point. This is all about who gets the blame for actions. Punish the real coercer.
In the following scenarios, tell me if Person1 would be punished under your moral system:
Person1 hates Person2, so he pulls out a gun and shoots him.
Person3 hates Person2, so Person3 holds a chainsaw to Person1’s genitals and coerces him into shooting Person2.
Person1 voluntarily gives weaponry and funding to a giant murderous gang. This gang is actively killing and torturing millions of innocent people.
Person 3 is a member of said gang, and threatens to kill Person1 if Person1 doesn’t give the gang weaponry and funding.
In your moral system, you have stated that you want to punish Person1 in scenarios 1 and 2. However, what about 3 and 4?
There is a distinction between law and moral rules and in this case although you have a moral obligation you dont have a legal obligation.
Meaning if you dont help your dying mother, what you did will be regarded as immoral by the society and you will pay by the way of isolation. But since you dont have a legal obligation, or commited a crime by not helping, no one in the society may make you pay by using force against you or your property.
Being coerced into sex is a single crime: the coercion. One person is punished. Being coerced into murder is a double crime: the coercion and the murder. Two people get punished.
Yes
Yes
No
No
If 3 was Yes then Osama Bin Laden would have been justified in killing Americans on 9/11.
Because that is causing a murder, which is different from enabling a murder, remember? Gun manufactures enable murder, but that is not enough to prove they cause any murders.
Now If someone says, “Im going to go kill Person” and I say, “Heres a gun, go do it.” You could argue that I have sold him the gun in exchange for him killing Person 1, which would probably make me liable.
I completely disagree. Hiring a hitman and providing funding and weaponry to a murderous gang are no different.
How about these two scenarios:
Person1 voluntarily gives weaponry and funding to a giant murderous gang. This gang is actively killing and torturing millions of innocent people. [You already said your personal moral system has no problem with this, you’d rather punish a woman who was coerced with a chainsaw at her genitals into commiting a crime.]
Person1 voluntarily gives weaponry and funding, and a note saying, “keep up the good work” to a giant muderous gang. This gang is actively killing and torturing millions of innocent people.
Suppose that I give one gun to this giant gang that “is actively killing and torturing millions of innocent people.” What is my obligation to the victims of this gang? What is my proportional liability?
No, giving something to a guilty person does not necessarily mean you’re committing a crime. That doesn’t mean that providing funding and weaponry to the Nazi regime is acceptable, and it doesn’t mean that volunteering a cigarette lighter to a man who is beating a woman drenched in gasoline and tied to a tree is acceptable; you have to use common sense.
As for my disturbing imagery, I try to make arguments as emotionally appealing as possible…
I’m just trying to point out that your personal moral system punishes victims and lets the “big guys” behind coercive operations off the hook just because they didn’t get their hands dirty.
Would you punish the man who volunteered the lighter?
What the difference between number 2 and hiring a hitman? Couldn’t hiring a hitman be done in a similar fashion?
First of all, I was talking about the following (both of which you said were ok under your personal moral system, unless you’ve edited):
Person1 voluntarily gives weaponry and funding to a giant murderous gang. This gang is actively killing and torturing millions of innocent people. [You already said your personal moral system has no problem with this, you’d rather punish a woman who was coerced with a chainsaw at her genitals into commiting a crime.]
Person1 voluntarily gives weaponry and funding, and a note saying, “keep up the good work” to a giant muderous gang. This gang is actively killing and torturing millions of innocent people.
I’m not sure how you want me to prove the hitman thing… I’m never going to hire a hitman!
The law does not exist to cause people to not commit crimes; thats a utopian idea. The law exists because people do commit crimes and it allows for the damage to be undone, as best is possible.
So if the law exists to undo damage, then anyone who does damage is answerable to the law. And how much damage you caused determines how much you are liable for. If I steal a candy bar its rightful owner can not shoot me in retaliation. This is because my crime does not mean I lose self ownership, it only reduces my ownership by the amount that I owe to the candy’s owner. And if my person is all that I possess, I owe him labor.
Now if by freak accident I burn my neighbors house down I have deprived my neighbor of his property; no differently than if I had stole it. Because of that I have lost ownership of an amount equal to what I owe him. This is the most fair solution. It would be very unfair to force my neighbor to bear the costs of my actions.
It would be moral for me to volunteer the payment to my neighbor, but it would be legal for my neighbor to take my house from me as payment.
There is a known hitman in town. I slip him a briefcase with money and a note saying, “I really don’t like Bob McName”.
I wouldn’t say that’s the difference, but we’ve certainly found it. Here we go:
In all of my examples in which someone coerces (like, for example, a man holding a running chainsaw next to a woman’s genitals) someone else into committing a crime, I still want all damages to be compensated. I, however, want the evil party, the coercer, to be the one to do it.
Freak accidents should not be punished. Car wrecks usually aren’t freak accidents; they are usually the result of a negligent choice from one or both parties. In cases where something truly freakish occurred (not the result of a negligent or malicious choice), then it doesn’t make sense to punish either person. Things happen, and no one made a malicious and negligent choice. In those cases, whoever wants to pay it for should pay for it.