[morphball]

I don't know how I feel about these stings, but I have a problem with stuff like this...

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I don't know your age or your parental status. If you are young and without kids, I can understand why you might believe that 16 is OK. But, 16. yr. olds lack the abilty to make sound decisions.

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Decisions have consequences, whether you make them rationally or not. The fact that you are 16 and maybe not as wise as an 18 year old should not excuse you from those consequences.

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Developmentally, they are not capable of entering into an adult relationship as an equal. There is solid research that actually shows, via MRI, that teenagers' frontal lobes, responsible for impulse control, planning etc., are not fully functional.

As a step-parent, I raised two kids (boy and a girl) through their teen years. I can tell you that neither kid at 16, nor any of their friends, were wholly (physically, mentally, emotionally) mature enough to enter into a sexual relationship with an adult.

Would you really be OK with some guy my age (38), buggering your 16yr. old daughter or son?

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What is the difference between having sex with an adult versus having sex with another 16 year old? If these kids are going to be having sex, why are we getting into peoples' business? I would be bothered if a 38 year old were buggering my kid, but if my kid wasn't being raped, I see no reason that 38 year should be imprisoned. Please explain to me why the emotional ramifications will be different? And much of the regret and shame these kids feel after the fact, I think, is caused solely because we are so disgusted by that, and because we make them feel as if something bad and awful happened, and that they were so victimized, the child chooses to believe it. I think this is of the same ilk as a "self-fulfilling prophecy"--like where teachers believe a certain kid has no future, and the kid starts to believe it as well. I am also reminded of instances where children started to believe they had been molested, when in fact they had not, because their caretakers wanted them to so believe.

These "catch the pedophile" things, in my opinion, can be dangerous. One, they are treating children as if they were pure and niave, when in reality, most of them are not. Two, they reinforce to children that since they are children, they should be excused from the consequences of their own mistakes. They should not. (I also have a problem with lesser punishments for children murderers, the victim is just as dead no matter what the perp's age...) I think people are of the mind that an adult should be looking out for the child, and all that stuff, but in reality, children need to be taught to look after themselves. We are not doing that in this country, and we have now had successive generations of people believing "I deserve" instead of "I need to take care of myself first." You can only have the latter when people have to bear the costs of their own mistakes, and that unfortunately includes things such as this.

Obviously, there is a fine line between something we find unpleasant, such as a horny kid sleeping with an adult, and an adult using positions of trust, authority, etc. to otherwise convince a young child to do something they otherwise would not. My problem with a lot of these things is how do we really know these kids are unwilling? I suspect that a lot of them actually are very willing, as much as that disturbs us.

So I am not sure about these stings, and these types of pedophile prosecutions in general. I am also fearful that they can lead to other infringements on our liberty that were not intended.