Reply to Kevin Spacey comes out after allegations of approaching a 14 year old boy

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I hope he doesn't get a pass since he's gay. Pedophilia is pedophilia. [/quote]

This wouldn't be pedophilia and doesn't have any signs that Spacey is a pedophile.

He sexually assaulted a teen.[/quote]

Whatever. Not a big difference in my opinion. Assaulting anyone is wrong. Assaulting a teen is even worse IMHO...and says something about the attacker. A 14 year old is a kid.

Again, I hope this isn't spun differently and the media takes a lighter touch because "he has the courage to come out." Spacey doesn't deserve a free pass. [/quote]

I'm not giving Spacey a pass on the incident, but if we're going to throw around terms like pedophile, context matters. A 26-year-old at a late-night party with a 14-year-old who may have looked older than he was, it's entirely possible Spacey didn't appreciate how young Rapp was at the time. It's not like Spacey was hanging around the local roller rink trying to pick up teens, the teen was in an adult context, which may have created an assumption that he was at least 17/18.

I further think that, given the context, you're doing Rapp and other victims a disservice by injecting the term pedophile into the discussion. Spacey's behavior would be wrong whether Rapp was 14 or 24 at the time, but now you've created a whole separate line of debate where people will end up defending Spacey against pedophilia accusations rather than focusing on the improper conduct itself. You've turned Spacey from a perpetrator of sexual assault into a victim of defamation. Good job.[/quote]

Sorry but you are dead wrong.

What you just wrote is the equivalent of saying "Well the context is that the high school girl at the frat party looked and dressed older than she was so of course it was a fair assumption for the guy to assume she was legal."  That is asinine. In fact, it is worse because the high school girl at the frat party and the frat boy are most like both teenagers, or at most a single digit age spread. Spacey was an adult man of at least twelve years older than this eighth grader. So yes, that makes him a child predator. This is not defamation. This is a fact.

If he was a recognized child actor on Broadway then Spacey knew he was a child.

If you look at pictures of him from the time, he clearly looked like a child and in fact, looked younger than his age.

Just because he is gay and liberal does not give Spacey a pass for being a predator.[/quote]

I will continue to disagree with you and your analogy. If Rapp had gone to the police at the time and Spacey had been charged with statutory rape based on Rapp's age, I would not have disagreed with that charge. That is not the same thing, though, as assuming that Spacey targeted Rapp specifically because he knew Rapp was underage (which is a key element of pedophilia, you're specifically targeting children because they are children). The same is true in your example, if the 14-year-old goes to a frat party or a bar with a fake id and has sex with someone there, the of-age person is guilty of statutory rape, but that doesn't mean the of-age person targeted the younger teen due to her young age as opposed to assuming she was of-age as well.

Taking a step back from this particular case, can we at least agree on the notion that an adult might mistake a younger teen for someone is over the age of legal consent, and thus engaged in a sexual act with them that constitutes statutory rape without is also being a case of pedophilia? If we can agree on that, then we can debate whether it's credible that [b]Spacey might not have appreciated how young Rapp was at the time. [/b]If we can't agree on that notion in the abstract, though, there's no sense in discussing this any further.[/quote]

DP. Your posts are laughable.

Spacey didn’t just run into Rapp randomly on the street. Spacey obviously knew who Rapp was when he invited him to his party.

If you’re this invested in defending Spacey’s egregious behavior, then you’re in for a hard time. Along with Bryan Singer, he’s been preying on young boys for a long time. I’m sure more victims are currently weighing whether to share their stories. [/quote]

Then let them come forward and I will hear their stories. I'm not defending Spacey's behavior, my argument from the very beginning has been that we should keep our focus on the assault that we know happened rather than getting distracted into these kinds of debates about what else might have been going on that we don't know for sure. We don't need to get into debating whether Spacey's behavior also fits the definition of pedophilia to know that it was wrong, that it was assault.[b] Spacey assaulted another person, why is that not enough to stand on its own as a terrible thing? [/b]Is it something about the fact that he assaulted another man, that we're not comfortable calling that assault on its own? Do we need it to be that Spacey deliberately targeted a child because we're still not convinced on some level that men, even adult men, also get sexually assaulted?[/quote]

According to longstanding societal norms as well as legal jurisprudence, it is generally considered worse to sexually assault a child than an adult.

I can’t believe you need me to explain this to you. [/quote]

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