| chemical castration |
[Feb. 17th, 2005|02:22 pm] |
I felt this was a topic worthy of resurrecting my LJ page ...
KSTP News story
I'll quote the whole article, since it's short and has no byline:
ST. PAUL - Minnesota state lawmakers plan to introduce an extreme bill to make repeat sex offenders less dangerous.
The "asexual rehabilitation" bill would be a form of chemical castration specifically for pedophiles.
Several other states have similar legislation.
The measure is expected to be introduced this afternoon.
I wonder if the good legislators would add a liability clause, stating that evidence exhonorating a person punished by this method entitles the person to a payment of [X] millions of dollars by the state. I can't imagine that compensation measured in smaller units would suffice. (Of course, this is targeted at repeat offenders, so the decreasing likelihood of multiple wrong-convictions mitigates a bit.)
Does anyone remember the bumper-sticker sociology lesson from the '80s: "Rape is a crime of violence, not sex"? I disagree with that but, more to the point, I think the campaign presented a false dichotomy. To state that violence and sex are separable and distinct is to ignore (1) the strong ties between violence and sex in our own animal ancestry (competition for a mate stands out here), and (2) that violence and sex combine very well for many people (BDSM practitioners are not so small a club, I think), even for healthy and well-adjusted people.
So if rape is not a crime driven by sex, what benefit will derive from eliminating the serial rapist's sex drive? |
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