Article Re: Clergy/Penitent Privilege

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 12/15/2023 at 7:13 PM, Calm said:

I think it is hard for some of us to wrap our heads around how you can see a tree that is fundamentally bad as producing wonderful fruit, to use the most common analogy.

The problem is that it didn't produce wonderful fruit.

There is a strange sort of connection being drawn that all of the good things that happened were caused by the child marriage - instead of occurring in spite of the child marriage. The good fruit is caused by lots of other things - and there is a fallacy here that correlation is causation.

I am trying to point out the wrongness of this particular point of view by arguing that the statistics make this an outlier - that the statistics are that child marriages generally result in bad outcomes. So the wonderful fruit that you mention shouldn't be expected in this case, and even more importantly, shouldn't be attributed to the child marriage itself.

On 12/15/2023 at 7:13 PM, Calm said:

Danzo’s example was not just making the best of a bad situation with the results less than what anyone would want for themselves.  The results were possibly even close to ideal for those involved if I understand Danzo correctly.

I am disagreeing with you. I might go so far as to say that the results were ideal given the context in which the decisions were made. But I would never call them idea. If the decision was ideal, then we should all be in favor of legalizing child marriage right? Do you see the problem with the logic here?

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 12/15/2023 at 8:09 PM, Danzo said:

I think you and I are looking at the issue from completely different points of view.

Talking to police officers (or people acting as law enforcement officers) is always a bad idea.  Always!

This is just nonsense Danzo.

You remind me of an old saying about the two reasons why anyone would deny doing something wrong. The first is because they didn't do anything wrong. And the second is because they did.

The idea that talking to law enforcement is always a bad idea is a sort of talking point that people hold when they aren't victims. And in this situation, what you haven't done here is to convince me that there is in fact nothing wrong going on. If there is nothing wrong going on, then there should be no reason to have a mandatory reporter around - because if there is no real abuse, then there isn't a strong likelihood that they would feel the need to report a suspicion of abuse. But if there is abuse going on, or even what looks like abuse, then there is a real value to making a report, and having those whose job it is to make these kinds of determinations do so in this case.

On 12/15/2023 at 8:09 PM, Danzo said:

Talking to the police (or someone acting as one) is the dumbest thing one can do if there is any risk that one might be part of the investigation.  It can never help you and can really harm you.  This isn't controversial in the legal world.  Anything you say can be used against you.  Nothing you say can be used to help you. Nothing!  This is evidence 101.  (Federal rules of evidence 801 if one wants to look it up)

And this is irrelevant to this discussion. I really don't care how much you dislike law enforcement. The concern here is not about the victims. And I don't think that this is wrong. And talking to police (as a victim) is a smart thing to do - even if you are going to be a part of the investigation.

And none of this changes the fact that if there is the concern in your ward that a mandatory reporter would report a situation in the conditions in a family in your ward, the best response would be to get the family to change those conditions. A different cultural standard is not a justifiable reason to allow abuse.

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 12/15/2023 at 8:29 PM, Stormin' Mormon said:

It's the Manichean approach here that I disagree with. You seem to be saying that if something isn't good, then it's bad, and if it's not bad, then it's good.

Can something just be neither good nor bad? Can it exist without any moral valence whatsoever until circumstance and use gives it one?

I am sure we often encounter things that are morally neutral.

Child marriage, though, is not one of these things. It causes harm in a way that is fundamental to its nature.

Do you believe that there are things that are fundamentally immoral? Or is everything in your book morally neutral until it is put into a context?

[Benjamin McGuire]

22 hours ago, Vanguard said:

Ate there any lifestyle examples of fundamental goodness?

Yes, I would say so.

Vegetarianism is a fundamentally good lifestyle. Marriage (using the term as a stand-in for the idea of a committed intimate relationship) is fundamentally good thing. Exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle is a fundamentally good thing. Education is a fundamentally good thing. We could make a long list of fundamentally good things.

Being a slave is definitely a fundamentally bad thing. So is having children working in factories. Racism is fundamentally bad. And so is child marriage. Drug addiction is a fundamentally bad thing. We could make a long list here of fundamentally bad things.

What makes things fundamentally good or bad is that they engage principles that we believe are fundamentally good or bad. We have many things that we believe are good: health, freedom (in its many forms), self-improvement, procreation and the continuance of our species, a healthy environment, reducing harms to others, and so on.

[Tacenda]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am sure we often encounter things that are morally neutral.

Child marriage, though, is not one of these things. It causes harm in a way that is fundamental to its nature.

Do you believe that there are things that are fundamentally immoral? Or is everything in your book morally neutral until it is put into a context?

This has been a teeter totter thread for me. I'm not sure which side to go, both have insight to consequences. It's not black and white. But see with this answer that there are always alternatives to things and marrying at 14 or even younger probably can be avoided no matter what. But maybe the choice made hopefully will be worked out, w/o causing undo harm. 

[Danzo]

12 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

 And talking to police (as a victim) is a smart thing to do - even if you are going to be a part of the investigation.

 

A very bad idea without an attorney present.

Law enforcement, like fire, is a useful tool but also very dangerous.  I speak from my personal experience, as well as my experience with people who are wrongly accused.

It would appear that you have a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature law enforcement when it comes to criminal investigations. The following video (by a law school professor to law school students) might be instructive.  

 

The power dynamic on these investigation highly favors those who know the law and highly goes against those who don't know the law.  A lot of people are rightly fearful of law enforcement, especially marginalized groups.  

I am glad you have never been the subject of a mistaken child abuse investigation. I hope you never have to experience this.

I also hope that your experience with law enforcement is always positive and you never have to worry about these things.

We are not all as fortunate.

[Benjamin McGuire]

10 hours ago, Danzo said:

Law enforcement, like fire, is a useful tool but also very dangerous.  I speak from my personal experience, as well as my experience with people who are wrongly accused.

I think, at this point, you are far enough off topic that further discussion about this won't add any value to the discussion.

I have had my share of encounters with law enforcement from many different perspectives over the course of my life - enough to know that what you are presenting is very much one-sided. I don't disagree with the fact that there is a very different perspective when we deal with law enforcement in the context of a criminal investigation. What I see here, though, is the complete distortion of what really happens with mandatory reporters. These kinds of circumstances only rise to the level of a criminal investigation when abuse is substantiated.

The problem here is that failures of the system simply are not a good justification for the elimination of the system. As long as we have criminals, we will need to have criminal investigations. As long as we have abuse in our society we will need a mechanism to report and investigate suspected abuse. You haven't provided anything in any of your contributions in this thread to suggest how it should be handled differently. And so your arguments really don't amount to anything useful here in this discussion. Your suggestion that we should hide potential abuse is part of the reason why we have mandatory reporters in the first place ...

Anyway, I am not interested in continuing the debate over the value of (or lack thereof) of interactions with law enforcement.