Great, wonderful, it’s fine with you. Problem is, it isn’t fine with the powers that be, and *that* was the subject of the original post, and the source of my comments to that effect. I make a comment about the double standard, you ask me what the point is, and your answer to my reply tells me that it flew right over your head. Read the original post. It’s bullshit that traumatized women can’t get EC–even on their dime–but the sexual predators who violated them could get Viagra.

“Great generalization about all sexual offenders, I am sure because you say so it is true. However I am not speaking of predators, I am speaking of individuals that have made mistakes, and yes, sexual relations with a loving partner can be a healthy expression and deeply relational. ”

Uh, no, it’s “true” in that many people who are charged with rape, sexual assault, or child molestation are either married, partnered, or dating people. IOW, they already experience sexual relations with a loving partner. I dispute that will help anyone in changing WRT rape and sexual assault because rape and sexual assault are crimes of *entitlement*.

“Do you just keep all this anger and frustration around to dump whenever you get a chance?”

I am not dumping–I’m calling bullshit. You’ve conflated all felons with sexual predators and accused us of judging all felons and wanting to deny them second chances. There’s a huge difference between denying a felon a second chance and not wanting to pay for a sexual predator’s Viagra.

BTW–I suggest you take your own advice about assuming where someone is coming from.

“I would guess that your friends who ‘get paper’ and carry guns are somehow having their convinctions expunged.”?

I do not know of any of my friends carrying guns.
There are rights restored to people on completion of their judgments. Voting rights, firearms, etc are often restored to people when they complete their sentences. I do not support or recommend people carry guns. However it is a right guaranteed by the Constitution, and we have to live with that until it changes. As I said, I would try and convince someone who wanted a gun to find another way to find peace. Blessings.

There does seem to be a double standard if one compares these two drugs and assistance. I do not believe that eliminating support for erectile drugs will get EC into one rape victim’s hands, so there is a breakdown here. I also do not believe in enabling anyone to do harm to another, however not all people that have been harmful in the past are harmful now. If the law states that they are entitled to a program and they qualify then that should be OK. Unless a compelling case can be made as to why they should not receive a benefit. Serial rapist in my book would be a disqualification. I just do not like the blanket usurpation of benefits by any cause.

“This is based upon a myth. Sexual predators don’t have trouble getting laid. Many have wives and girlfriends (and many are church-going family men). Rape and sexual assault can and does happen in relationships, so your point about the benefits sexual relations for convicted sex offenders doesn’t wash.”?
Great generalization about all sexual offenders, I am sure because you say so it is true. However I am not speaking of predators, I am speaking of individuals that have made mistakes, and yes, sexual relations with a loving partner can be a healthy expression and deeply relational.

” Lectures on how the naughty survivor should just forgive,”?

What are you talking about? Where was there any judgment on the victim in anything I said? My experience and belief systems tell me that forgiveness at some point is a very freeing thing for the victim. I never said forgive and forget, we often never forget the wrongs done to us, but forgiveness releases the victim from the event to hold power over us that practice it. Who said anything about demanding or expectations? What peanut gallery are you talking about? Do you just keep all this anger and frustration around to dump whenever you get a chance? Please do not assume you know where I am coming from just because you have encountered people as quick to be judgmental as you seem to be.

A large part of our therapy for folks dealing with resentments and anger issues are exercises to help them identify those wrongs and release them from the power to continue to affect them. Forgiveness is one part of that process. (Many carry baggage for years and it is like the day it happened every day, some choose to let go, it works.)

I find it ironic that the SEC has higher standards than does Congress.

“You don’t have a right to an erection.”?

Why do you feel the need to personalize this? Thank you for clarifying this to me, I was confused until you came along. I agree that funding for erectile dysfunction meds could easily be eliminated, and possibly should be, the point I suggest is that to make a blanket law regarding all of a group of people could be discriminatory, (like all abortion should be illegal) all the rest of the baggage is yours. Blessings.

I find it terribly difficult. I have found that after years of working in addiction and related criminology that it is still possible indeed it happens that we just get it wrong. Some of our folks are adept liars. On the other hand, it is more frequent that the light goes on in someone’s head and they get it and start changing their life.

The magnitudes of the consequences of getting it wrong are huge. I have lost 18 people in the last 24 months just that I know of. (As in dead.) Several more have been arrested and many are still on the margins still not finished with the insanity. However there are many who do get it right and that is what we try and improve on. Our program works closely with the courts, drug courts and probation and mental health offices to give both teeth but also better assessment of the individuals. We need to find more funding and more centers to have treatment for individuals who have issues and find themselves involved in crimes. The statistics are just stark; jail no treatment high recidivism, jail or probation with a treatment program, huge difference. We work with judges on community service and victim restitution in a lot of cases as part of the felons program, we also use mental health and counseling to a high degree, it works. All this helps to reduce the risk of incorrect determinations, but it is inevitable that with the current system of crime and punishments, the perpetrators meet the states obligation and then are simply released regardless of true repentance or change. It happens hundreds of times a day.

(a) prudent or (b) imprudent for the government (the set of public bodies charged with the maintenance of the peace and the upholding of each citizen’s right to be left in same) to roll the dice and attempt to determine the status of each maybe-former rapist?

There is absolutely no easy answer for this one. Not simply with rape but in the entire gambit of criminal behavior. I do not see it as solely the Gov. job, I think as a community it is our role as well to work with people and help them change. I look hard to reconciliation as opposed to doing time. Doing time does nothing to contribute to the community or the victim, and frequently aggravates the offender to a harder line. (I see so many dope fiends go in with drug issues and come out criminals it is terrible.) It does keep a dangerous person out of harming others which is a valid function.

Prudent or not, it is happening every day, and we need to get better at changing folks, more cells is not the answer. As with most issues dealing with people, we are so dynamic there is no one answer. We continue to try and change people for the better one at a time, just as you do with your persuasion and discussion on this blog. It is creating a vision of caring that gets people involved and things do get better. Blessings.

We’re talking about the government making a decision as to who has ‘changed’ enough that we can pay for their Viagra. How do we make that decision? You keep conflating what we, as individual humans should do, with what the government should determine.

I would guess that your friends who ‘get paper’ and carry guns are somehow having their convinctions expunged.

“One could argue for the beneficial relational qualities of sexual relations, as one could argue for the defensive need for guns. I will go for the first far more than the latter. ”

This is based upon a myth. Sexual predators don’t have trouble getting laid. Many have wives and girlfriends (and many are church-going family men). Rape and sexual assault can and does happen in relationships, so your point about the benefits sexual relations for convicted sex offenders doesn’t wash.

“Treating a person as a criminal forever will do nothing to fix the broken beings and victims of crimes. Forgiveness though does allow for healing to take place and releases the abused from continuance in the place of being a victim. ”

Lectures on how the naughty survivor should just forgive, like it’s that easy does not allow for the survivor to move on. Forcing the issue to someone who was violated isn’t going to help them heal. If anything, it will make it worse by giving them the impression that their anger–and their fear–is not valid.

Forgivensess is something the survivor decides to do, on their own timetable. Not when you preach it, or the perp demands it. It is not something you or anyone else can dictate or push. Some people never grant forgiveness. That doesn’t mean they haven’t moved on. Some people grant it too soon because they believe the lectures coming from all sides–that they should forgive, that they will never be whole if they don’t forgive, and that they are lesser people if they don’t forgive. Problem is, it doesn’t help because they weren’t ready and the peanut gallery was more conerned with shaking their fingers at the survivor than oh, showing a shred of compassion.

People are discriminated against due to past (convicted) actions. You cannot get certain jobs if you have been convicted of certain crimes. The SEC rules that convicted felons can’t serve as executives on publicly-traded companies. They could be 100% reformed, but it doesn’t matter. There is too much of a worry of them screwing people over again.

These guys want to pay for their Viagra, let them–I’m not stopping them. But they sure as hell shouldn’t get it on my dime–or on their survivors’ dimes. You don’t have a right to an erection. Your health doesn’t suffer, and you won’t die. There are plenty of people with more pressing medical problems who do deserve our resources.

I am not arguing that sex offenders get anything handed out to them. I am saying that if it is a practice for anyone else, that there is likely a group that has had issues in the past, and should not be treated differently than anyone else if they are in fact changed.

Fair enough.

Does the state possess the means or the competence to look within the human heart and determine whether someone has “changed”? Should it attempt to do so?

Or should the state - as the legitimate repository of deadly force - restrict its determinations to questions which are determinable on a more objective basis? Bear in mind in your answer that the state is the part of society which has the legitimate right to go around killing people. Do you want the killing machine to work on objective principles, or subjective individual moral judgment?

As far as knowing if someone has changed, it is very difficult to know another’s heart or how they will act under extreme circumstances.

Indeed.

We do the very best we can and celebrate the successes while we learn from our mistakes. It is a process and non of it is perfection.

This is an acceptable counsel of achievable results, for private citizens, as well as a cogent summation of the learning process.

Some learning curves are steeper than others. Some learning processes carry consequences far more severe than others. (The best reason I’ve ever heard offered for letting your kids make mistakes when they are young is that the consequences at that age are (usually) way less severe than at later ages. It’s better to learn that stealing is wrong by taking a candy bar and feeling bad about it, than it is to learn that stealing is wrong by taking a diamond necklace in a robbery and going to jail for 20 years.)

In the current topic of discussion - giving sexual aids to sexually dysfunctional perhaps-former rapists- how would you characterize (a) the difficulty of making the determination that someone has changed, and (b) the magnitude of the consequence of an incorrect determination?

And with those characterizations in mind, do you believe it would then be (a) prudent or (b) imprudent for the government (the set of public bodies charged with the maintenance of the peace and the upholding of each citizen’s right to be left in same) to roll the dice and attempt to determine the status of each maybe-former rapist?

As far as knowing if someone has changed, it is very difficult to know another’s heart or how they will act under extreme circumstances. I wish there were a simple test. We do the very best we can and celebrate the successes while we learn from our mistakes. It is a process and non of it is perfection. (What works on one, fails miserably on the next some times. It is what keeps me getting up and doing the work day after day.)

I worked with a person who was convicted of rape at the age of 18, he did his time and was released from probation for that crime, but was registered as such. 10 years later I met him. For the 8 months I worked with him his wife and two children came to church to be with him every Sunday while he was in residence, and had regular visitation and passes the entire stay with us. He was no longer the kid with a minor girl, and appeared to have moved on from that time. Can I say with certainty that he would not rape? No. It occurred once, and not again from that time on that anyone knows. (Not that once is an acceptable number.) As he is dealing with other health issues and is not yet fully employed, it is conceivable that he is on public access for healthcare. Were he suffering from erectile dysfunction due to something organic or mechanically wrong with him, and his Dr’s recommended it, I would not have a problem with his getting assisted meds. (Real person, potentially real scenario.)

As for the guns, there is less sympathy from me there, I am very anti gun, and deal daily with their results. I do know of people that have been taken off paper and had their rights restored that are legally able to carry a weapon. (In my state just about anyone can anywhere.) I would encourage them not to. It is a good but not equal comparison. One could argue for the beneficial relational qualities of sexual relations, as one could argue for the defensive need for guns. I will go for the first far more than the latter. I do not agree that it is dehumanizing to deny carrying a weapon; however labels have been used to dehumanize people forever. The right does it well, it is not men and women, people, that are of the same sex that want to have the same rights as others to get married, they call them a name instead, it is easier to treat folks differently when we call them something other than ourselves. It also hurts very much. Blessings.

How do we measure whether someone has ‘genuinely changed’? You seem to be arguing that it’s OK to hand out Viagra to sex offenders because it would be cruel to punish them forever, but now you throw in the additional caution that they must be ‘genuinely changed’. What does a rapist need to do to prove that it’s OK to get state-funded Viagra?

Is it also dehumanizing to deny someone convicted of armed robbery the right to carry a concealed weapon?

EC should be available whether Viagra is subsidized or not, what is your point?

I do not see where a person who has genuinely changed and has fulfilled their legal and civil obligations should be treated differently than anyone else. Treating a person as a criminal forever will do nothing to fix the broken beings and victims of crimes. Forgiveness though does allow for healing to take place and releases the abused from continuance in the place of being a victim.

mythago, absolutely heinous. That is the point, if we label with the words for the action it is dehumanizing and easer to simply treat all of the people with that label in one fashion. However if we take people as individuals and treat them as the unique human beings that each of us are (it is much harder) then we have to take responsibility for what we can do and that means being able to move on sometimes and yes it is conceivable that prescribing a drug to restore someone’s sexual functioning might be called for. It does not have to happen at the expense of anyone who has been hurt. On the contrary the more people that become aware of their place in the community and their responsibility to it, the better it is for all of us. Or, we can continue to have increasingly separate societies where there is greater marginalization; and that would be better? Blessings.

You don’t believe rape is a heinous act?

Rape is NOT a compulsive behavior. It is a crime of violence and entitlement. It leaves very real, broken human beings in its wake, but because the vast majority of them are women, they seem to matter little.

The de-funding of mental health services starting back in Reagan times has paralleled a rise in crime rates and a rise in police and prison modalities; they do not work for rehabilitation. The issues of victim’s rights and the need for reparations are all valid and need to be included in the discussion. However to simply treat all felons and convicts as evil and necessitating punishment for the rest of their lives does not square with the reality of what can happen to people who want to change if given the chance.

I employ many convicted felons, (including two for homicide) as a group, the folks I work with are not much different then places I have worked with fewer convicted individuals. There are those that love drama, those that are angry at the world, but mostly folks that want to get on and provide for themselves and their families and help others that are trying to make a new start. The horror stories of abuse that most of the people I deal with have to live with never cease to amaze me. It is incredible that they are as able to function as they are. (I cannot explain it.) It is easy to spout rhetoric about groups of people and not put a face on it. RAPIST, ADDICT, FELON, ABUSE such heinous words, implying heinous acts. I challenge folks that wish to use blanket judgments to justify treatments of individuals to come to a place where they can spend some time with the individuals trying hard to create a new life and see if they can condemn them after eating, teaching and working and worshipping with them.

It is strange that some of the very hands I have held in silence could do what they have done, however if a look at the footprints of my life were revealed it would be scary to see where they have been at times. I am not suggesting that all felons are rehabilitatable, or that all are worthy of grace. By the same token many are worthy of grace and do well when given the chance and the tools. Blessings.

Not really. Only the most extreme forms of pathological dissociation from reality allow for the kind of complete mental incapacitation that would literally mean the person no longer distinguishes right from wrong, has no responsibility, no capacity for decision, no agency at all. That is actually very rare (otherwise lawyers would have a field day, if it was so easy to prove mental incapacity).

Besides, ’sick’ can be used in a non-literal or rather non-medical meaning, to describe violent behaviour without anything like that being meant, any assumption that there is actually a full mental incapacity. I don’t think any anti-social behaviour has to be pathological for it to be ’sick’ (wrong, perverted, malignant) in that sense. I think it’s best to keep actual illnesses (which do not normally impair a person’s moral judgement) very distinctly spearated from actual murderous or violent behaviour.

we may look at a rapist or murderer and say he is sick, sickness implies lack of responsibiltiy or lack of ability to know right from wrong, the sickness made me do it, but immoral implies deliberate assertion of free will to do a very bad thing to another human being.

so most murderers and rapists are immoral not sick. tho there are some who are truly mentally ill, but how do you distinguish between the two?

giving viagra is simply for the ability to have an erection, how does the inability to have one harmful to your health? many live with that their whole lives and are still happy and productive members of society, but being able to have sex can increase the quality of life somewhat, but why should a rapist who abuses that right be allowed to enjoy that privelege?

if we worry about discrimmination we are discriminating against people by putting them in prison for wrong doing. they are being singled out for “special treatment”.

most of these criminals better be glad they live in amercia, because in many countries, and history of many nations rapists and debilberate murderers were executed with in a few days of convicting them there was no years of appeals and supporting the criminal with free food water and other necessities.

many of the lesser crimes were punished either by cutting off body parts or repaying the victims several times what was stole or enforced labor.

of course many innocents were executed too because they thought they were guilty, and that is unacceptable too.

so there are alot of flaws, but it is better than nothing.

of course that was abused too, abuses are ineveitable, not acceptable by any means but we are talking realities here. not wishful thinking.

oh by the way there is not consenses on blood pressure meds, many people who have high bp are thin, and many who (like myself) blood pressure goes up not down as fitness is increased. bp meds are the only way for me.

I lost 20 pounds and increased my exercise only to have my bp spike higher and higher and stay there. so you can’t force diets on people, because history proves weight and fatness is irrelavent, for most anyway. a few might benefit such as extreme obese.

I have heard some doctors start to question fatness as having any bearing on blood pressure, in fact they are starting to look at lean muscle tissue on overweight people as the culprit, heavier people have more muscle tissue just to carry the excess weight around, since there is little blood in fat, (just look at a peice of meat and compare the meaty part and fat part, the fat is white but meat red that is the blood vessels and blood there.

so the heart has to support more energy and circulation to support lean muscle mass than fat. but losing overall weight both lean and fat can probably help that, I am sure for me, becaust taking bp meds has really hurt my performance in exercise, (o2 debt builds up easily now) so if I can shed this weight I am sure that will help, I hope.

anyway back on topic, I think the victims should have some say too on how rapists and murderers are punished too, they should be allowed to describe to the jury and judge, even in private if necessary the suffering they endured the night mares and how their lives have lost the quality it once had,

why should the murderer or rapists be allowed a better quality of life then their victims? why should they get medications the victim can’t afford as far as drugs for pleasure not for health?

I understand medications such as insulin, or bp meds or pain meds if they have a chronic condtion like migrains or depression. giving someone these medications is not helping them commit crimes. viagra is questionable, abuse it and lose it it might just be telling the rapist that his rights are greater than the victims and that what he did is not so bad and that he still has the right to enjoy sex.

but that is how I summize it anyway, I am just glad I don’t have to make those decisions, that is a heavy responsiblity. I guess that is why we have lawyers, constitution, juries, and the like.

RR

Compassion, equality and social justice being things that make the state “soft,” and are incompatible with protecting its citizens. And if we become barbarians in the process, hey! We’ll have those soft religious folks to console us.

What any of this has to do with the perfectly rational state interest of refusing to buy Viagra for sex offenders, I have no idea.

By providing erectile enabling drugs, one is not enhancing but restoring a person to healthful functioning.

They are also enhancement drugs.

Uh huh. A state that deals in compassion, equality, and social justice will have its ass handed to it by the barbarians, and the peace-loving citizens of same will find themselves being tortured for fun by people whose concept of morality is “if it moves, kill it.”

The state does not have the luxury of being soft. That gentility is for the society protected by the state to pursue. Christ himself recognized this, and advised us that the kingdom of heaven will not be found in the principalities of earth, but in our own hearts. Do not look for the state to provide the Christian love which we are asked to generate ourselves.

The issue to me about denying a medical benefit that others receive to a convict is less about the substance and more about discrimination…

Indeed. Discrimination - as in, I am going to discriminate in terms of whom I am going to give erectile-enhancing drugs. Peaceable citizens, OK. Vicious rapists, no. I discriminate in terms of whom I give my car keys to. My teenage son, perhaps. My three-year old, no. A person who does not discriminate is an idiot in most circumstances, a moral monster in some.

“Discrimination” is not an intrinsically invidious term to sensible people. Although there are some forms of discrimination which decent people do find objectionable, declining to help rapists get hard-ons is not one of them. Find another argument for enabling violators of women.

You want to make sure the next Ted Bundy can have a nice woody ready for his victims, you go buy the pills and give them to him.

GW would agree with you totally, that is how he justifies his war, torture, and civil rights infringements.

Your assumption of the state is rather odd. The state I would like to see deals in compassion, equality and Social Justice. Where remedies are sought to the issues and not someone’s ideas of retribution and punishment. Executing a criminal will not undo a crime. (Neither will restitution.) However in the working out of the issues hopefully they and we will become aware of our relationship to each other and humanity. To me that is what living this journey is all about.

If we were to visit a prison in America today, we would find a disproportionate number of poor and people of color in residence. A large number of the prison population suffering from acute mental illness, they ought not to be punished for being sick, they need help and a secure environment to protect them and others, not punishment. Cruelty only fosters greater cruelty, it cannot be justified by one side and not the other. The “War on drugs”? has done nothing to reduce drug usage, building more prisons and locking them up has done nothing to stem the tide either. Treatment and institutions that treat the person not the crime are the best defense we have against further cruelty. It would be much easier to simply lop off a hand or gouge out an eye, but I don’t think it will create a better community.

Not all convicts are permanently dangerous. I deal with many individuals that were either very young or not in their right mind at the time of their offenses and have become completely changed and unlike the person that would hurt someone else. Many are reacting out of abusive situations in there childhood. Should mistakes in early life doom one forever? There are differing types of people; there should be differing responses and solutions.

The issue to me about denying a medical benefit that others receive to a convict is less about the substance and more about discrimination, simply being a convict is not enough. Blessings.