Pastor who raped daughter gets less than minimum sentence because he is pastor. - Sensationalist Headlines

It's interesting that this idea of salvation through faith alone largely had roots in refuting the corruption of the catholic church and indulgences as a means of achieving salvation just by fucking paying for it, and yet Christians in their infinite creativity have once again found a way to convince themselves that they can have their cake and eat it too. Sure, ignore the key messages behind your faith, live a life of greed and splendor, you'll still get into heaven. All you need to do is say the magic words and believe.

What it comes down to is Christanity, like all religion, changes over time, but throughout history there are always assholes who use whatever form its currently taking to justify being assholes. This is why I have never bought the idea that religion has caused more suffering and death than anything else in history. Even if this is technically true on a purely statistical basis, especially in the last few thousand years of history (and even then, I'm not sure the numbers actually justify this) - the reason this is so is because its the most convenient excuse for being an asshole. But it's far from the only one. Like, remember how the original justification for the african slave trade was that bullshit about black people being descended from Cain and thus being under god's curse? If it was ultimately a religious problem, you would have thought that shit would have disappeared once the enlightenment era began, and religion suddenly was out of style. But nope, they found a way to continue treating black people like shit: they just took Darwin's newly minted theory of evolution and mangled it so they could claim that black people were less evolved than white people. Almost as though any justifications for bigotry, religious or otherwise, are just excuses, and the real reason people are racist is because humans love being hateful bigoted fucks and feeling superior to people they don't like. In other words, this isn't a problem with ideology, religion, or any particular belief system. This is a problem with humanity, period. And there's no easy solution. Some ideologies and religions may more easily allow people to be hateful shits, but if you clamp down on them and they stop being popular, other religions and ideologies will arise to take their place as excuses for hate. I think that's the reason Nazism is still around. Didn't matter how many people died in WWII because of it. It is possibly the most effectively distilled form of hatred in human history, and it'll continue to exist as long as there are lots of awful people who want a reason to be hateful towards their fellow humans and to continue nursing their inflated egos.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/113148/5982acb0-ac5a-48b3-890c-352c9e23cb45/image.png Absolutely disgusting. If any changes will ever come to the US, this Shariaesque behaviour should be a focus.

I honestly really don't buy this whole "hate vectors don't matter because people will find a way to hate regardless" rhetoric. It's a lot harder to build an institutional hateful ideology from scratch than latch onto an existing one. Getting rid of institutional vectors of hatred would have a significant impact.

I actually agree with this. The problem is that until very recently, humanity hasn't taken the job of ridding ourselves of those institutional vectors of hatred. In fact, for most of history, hatred was the norm, and those who challenged it were a small minority. The african slave trade was only abolished in europe because it had ceased being profitable. Here in America, we had to fight a fucking civil war to end it. And the south has continued to be fueled by hatred and fear ever since, and the national government and rest of the country has allowed it to fester. Yeah, if we banned Nazism like Germany did after WWII, we wouldn't be having the problem we're having here. But we haven't, because of our dangerous commitment to classifying hate speech as "free speech" and thus allowing it to be protected under the first amendment. At minimum, if the US ever wants to progress, this is the first thing that has to go. And this goes for the rest of the world. WWII should have resulted in Nazism being perma-banned world wide. But people naively assumed that the fallout of WWII itself was a strong enough argument against Nazism ever being taken seriously again. Nope - turns out people to this day love to hate Jews and other minority groups for no good reason, and Nazism is a perfect conductor for those wretched beliefs.

Religious nuttery aside, 12 years would be a harsh sentence anywhere but in the US. The title is also just straight up wrong, he didn’t get “less than the minimum sentence”, he got less than the “minimum of 72 years” that the prosecution wanted. Those things are very, very different things.

You know right that even progressive countries like Norway have life sentences too, right? They can renew the sentence indefinitely if a criminal is deemed to still be a threat to society. That's why Anders Breivik is never getting out of jail.

Yes, as a Dane I’m aware of that. Doesn’t change that this would be a harsh sentence in Scandinavian countries. As a point of reference, in “Tøndersagen” here in denmark, the parents of two daughters abused them sexually and rented them out to others over a period of 8 years or so, and the father, who was the main culprit, got ten years. He’s out of prison as of 2-3 years ago.

That's uh... I don't even know what to say about that. Personally, I'm of the opinion that sexual abuse is a worse crime than murder on the whole. I've never understood why rape on its own doesn't earn people nearly as many years on average as murder on its own. Cause even a first degree murder that is really quick at least doesn't prolong suffering. But someone who is raped has to live with it for the rest of their life.

Because women are property.

That sounds like a bit of backwards logic to me - should we also start punishing attempted murder more harshly than murder, since “you have to live with it for the rest of your life”? Should a rape matter less in the sentence if the victim is also murdered? Not to trivialise something atrocious, but you can live a full life after being a victim of a rape. If you’re murdered, well, you can’t. And I doubt someone attempting to murder you does much good for your psyche, either (not to mention that physical assault is also a complete violation of your person), if you survive. Maybe rape should be punished more harshly, I don’t know, but in general metering out punishment is hard. Figuring out how many years in prison rape is worth is an abstract task, and punishment beyond “an eye for an eye” always will be. Try telling the family of a murder victim that 14 years in prison is all the rest of their son’s life was worth - I’m sure many will disagree.

I think rape should definitely be punished more harshly. Because going on what little data I can find, rapists in this country only spend 5-7 years in jail. Which seems incredibly low for something that can cause somebody severe mental and physical trauma for the rest of their life.

"If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one" There's several views in Christian Soteriology about what the criteria for Heaven is. On the condition of "accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour", that pastor will go to Heaven. Obviously only if such a place existed lol

This isn't true, prosecutors can appeal criminal sentences

I would guess it comes down to our culture not taking statutory rape seriously enough. I saw this in action around a decade ago, in a thread on another forum about Kevin Clash (Elmo's actor on Sesame Street) being accused of statutory rape. A notable figure in the community actually excused his actions by pulling out the old canard about how "teenage boys wih sleep with their teachers in high school don't suffer - they get high fives in the locker room." And I believe this was and is still a very common sentiment. Doesn't make it any less disgusting, though.

Punishments should never be about what they "deserve". It serves no purpose other than getting revenge to punish for punishment's sake. The goal should always be 'How can we best prevent this from happening?', and as far as I know the Scandinavian model works better than the American model. If you don't believe they can be taught to be better people, then logically it seems negligent to let them out at all, ever. If you do believe they can be made better so they won't commit the crime again, then that should always be the top priority, and that goal should solely be what guides the method used (which ideally should be more than just "how many years", especially in a case like this). My understanding is that it's a common issue in America that people come out of prison totally isolated and alien from the outside world after long sentences, and so they're even more likely to commit crimes again. To me it seems that in this case, an important goal is convincing the 'community' that he really did what he did. Whatever punishment (regardless of sentence length) or attempted rehabilitation they give him, it could be entirely ineffective if he has a large crowd of cheerleaders on the outside saying he's a great guy the entire time. If he can just go back to life as it was after this and not have lost any support at all, then I think the chances of him reoffending would be high...